


Come Home With Me

by quantumoddity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Circus, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossover (kind of), F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, The Kingkiller Chronicals inspired, Trans Male Character, Trans Mollymauk Tealeaf, Vox Machina Ships are in chapter 3, calling this the rothfuss au by the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-01-05 21:38:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18374567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Bren Aldric Ermendrud has lived with Trent Ikithon as long as he can remember, suffering under his tuition for years, turning him into the strongest wizard possible- and the most miserable young man in Rexxantrum.Until the circus comes to town, with one Mollymauk Tealeaf as it's ringmaster. And Bren sees a way to a new name, a new life and a chance at happiness.-An AU based on the story of Kvothe's parents from The Kingkiller Chronicles





	1. Chapter 1

For Bren, life had become all about small acts of rebellion.

They could never be much, he had to conserve what little bravery he had, sheltering it in cupped hands like an anaemic flame wavering and flickering dangerously at every breeze. But every so often it would flare and skip, a strengthening heartbeat, and Bren would slide the change from an errand run up his sleeve rather than turning it over with the goods he’d been sent to buy or he would borrow a book from the city library he knew wouldn’t be approved of, tucking it in his coat, feeling its edges press against his chest like a stab of thrilling guilt as the rest of his selection were turned over and inspected and approved of when he got home. Sometimes it was even as small as waiting until the last possible second to begin his chores, letting his thoughts wander, letting the day be his for as long as he could before he had to remember that his life wasn’t his own.

And sometimes, when he was passing the door to Father’s office and heard, for the first time in years, an unfamiliar voice, he would stop in his tracks and listen.

A small act of rebellion. Never seen, never thought of, never acknowledged by anyone but him, spent sparingly like a last clipped copper penny. But as long as he still had those to give, there was something to live for.

So Bren stopped and he listened.

He knew every single person in the small borough of Rexxantrum that Father was in charge of. He knew the bakers and butchers and grocers who would come to plead that they couldn’t pay the taxes and leave more unhappy than they came, he knew the crownsguard and constables who gave him bribes, he knew the other archmagi with their sonorous voices and quivering hands.

But this voice was new. It was rich and smooth and full of life, it was like music. The more Bren heard of it, the more eagerly he pressed his ear to the crack in the heavy oak door, like a plant aching towards sunlight.

“We are a registered troupe, Mr Trent, I can assure you of that,” the voice said, confident and sprightly, like everything was an amusing joke, “Not one ounce of trouble in the five years I’ve been in charge.”

“Be that as it may, we are a different people in Rexxantrum,” Father’s voice was low and gravelly, instantly making Bren’s heart kick with fear as he recognised the subtle signs of anger, the signs he’d been trained to hear and respond to, to do whatever he could to make them go away.

But the voice didn’t know the signs. It bulled on.

“My circus is for all people, Mr Ikithon. All people crave a little excitement every now and then, a little break from their hard working lives. In exchange for a pitch in the main square and ninety percent of the show intake, your folk can have a night of magic and frivolity.”

“Drinking and debauchery, you mean,” Father’s voice was a whip, smacking down the other and outside the door, Bren flinched, “And please do not call what you do _magic_. What I do is magic. You are speaking to one of the archmages of the Cerberus Assembly, sir.”

“I am fully aware of that. And you can call me Mr Tealeaf. Or Mollymauk, I don’t mind.”

Bren’s heart crashed to the floor. Couldn’t the man hear the danger in Father’s voice? Didn’t he realise he had to back away and do it quickly, beg forgiveness?

“Be grateful I am deigning to refer to you as sir at all,” the reply was chilly, the end of every word bitten off, “Your circus may go elsewhere. We have no place for your kind in Rexxantrum.”

There was a long pause. Bren knew he should turn and walk away as fast as he could, move on and forget what he’d heard, go on with his day. Father would be furious if he saw how little work he’d done that morning and what he’d do if he found him listening at the door didn’t even bear thinking about.

But he didn’t. So he was there to hear the soft chuckle and scrape of a chair as Mr Tealeaf drew back and replied, still bright as summer grass though there was an edge to his words that hadn’t been there before.

“Thank you, Mr Ikithon. I’ll be sure to write to Baron de Rolo and ask him to take your fair city off the rotation.”

This new pause was shorter though heavier, weighing like a ton of lead.

“Baron de Rolo?” Father sounded like he was about to explode. Though Bren was no longer afraid. This mysterious stranger had an unseen shield.

“Our patron,” the smile was obvious in his voice, “Though its more his lovely wife who funds our pursuits, she’ll be most upset to hear we’ve been barred from the capital of the Empire. The lady Vex’halia, of course you must know her, seeing as you’re an archmage and all. Our writ of performance is right here, affixed with the seal of Whitestone…” a rustle of fabric and paper, “…as you would have known if you’d asked to see it. It’s the law to do that for all travelling performance troupes, just so you know.”

This pause was all iron, a bitter taste in the mouth.

“One night,” Father practically snarled, “That is all. Then you leave.”

“That’s all we ever asked.”

Bren started as he heard Father’s chair scrape across the carpet. The spell broken, he he straightened so fast there was a stab of dizziness in the base of his skull and his heart lurched like it was getting left behind, barrelling to the end of the corridor and making himself look very busy pulling some books off of the hall bookcase, hoping it wasn’t visible at this distance that it was a completely random assortment, not some volumes to help him write his latest essay.

He couldn’t help his eyes sliding to the opening office door. Father was the first to step out, always in his ceremonial robes, face long and lined and hard. The man who followed was so different, so out of place here in the town house that it was like two completely different artists with completely different sensibilities had been forced to share the same canvas. He was fabulously dressed, in a long coat of plush, plum velvet that forked at the end and whose dagged sleeves revealed long arms decorated in ink and gilded metal; high waisted trousers in the same colour scheme with a split pattern, stripes on one side and diamonds on the other and long boots of supple, soft black leather. Under his arm was a hat, tall and proud, a true showman’s hat. Though quite how it was going to fit over horns that size, Bren had no idea.

A tiefling. An honest to goodness tiefling, here in Rexxantrum.

No wonder Father had a face the colour of a storm cloud ready to burst.

With a smile that said he fully understood the affect he was having on the archmage and was enjoying it intensely, the tielfing swished a long purple tail and swept the hat onto his head with a grand gesture, revealing the fact it had two cleverly concealed holes for his horns.

“You should come to the show, Mr Ikithon,” he flashed a set of sharply pointed incisors, reaching into a cavernous sleeve to pull out a piece of gold paper, holding it out to Father, “Give yourself a night off. See what the Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities has to offer.”

“Thank you,” Father said stiffly, pointedly taking the ticket and immediately letting it fall to the carpet, as if it had never been between his long, white fingers. He made no move to retrieve it. Neither did Mr Tealeaf.

“No, thank you, sir,” the tielfing smiled and started down the stairs, “We’ll cause not a spot of trouble, you’ll see.”

Though in that moment, as he turned, his eyes- drop cut rubies with no pupils- rested lightly on Bren, there at the end of the corridor. Immediately, he felt his cheeks go red, which Father always snapped at him to control as it looked ridiculous with his auburn hair and made his freckles stand out. But the tielfing didn’t snap or look vaguely disgusted. He just smiled and winked, swift and careless, before disappearing down the stairs in a swirl of velvet.

Struck silent, Bren watched with his mouth slightly open, stirrings in the pit of his stomach.

“Bren Aldric Ermendrud.”

Father’s voice was sharp and dangerous and it rushed at Bren with a horrible, sickening certainly that he was about to face the weight of all the built up fury and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

“Close your mouth, boy,” Father snapped, striding down the corridor until he was bearing down upon him. Even though Bren was twenty five and had grown taller than Father ever would, he still managed to make him feel an inch off the ground by sheer force of will.

“You look like a fool,” he knocked the books from Bren’s arms with a hard, sharp shove, “What do you think you’re doing, standing here gawking when you should be working?”

Bren stared down at his feet, biting his lip hard, “I’m sorry, Father.”

There was a long, horrible moment of silence as Bren looked at the scattered books, lying there like limp, dead birds and prayed Father couldn’t read his thoughts, couldn’t see those stirrings inside him.

Maybe even if he couldn’t see them, he could sense the shadows of them, for he snarled, “If I hear of you having anything to do with those deviant circus folk, I will punish you more severely than you have ever known. Am I clear, Bren?”

“Yes,” he managed to choke out, fear making his voice frail and shaky though he knew that was the desired effect.

Though his hands seemed aged, they moved faster than lightning, tightening around Bren’s chin like a vice and jerking it upwards so he couldn’t help but stare into those red tinged eyes.

“Yes what?”

“Yes _Father.”_

 

After Father had turned back into his office and slammed the door shut, leaving only his harsh command to pick up those books ringing in Bren’s ears, he stayed still for a while, eyes closed, , shaky fingers pressed to his neck, counting his heart beats. If he got to ten, he would be okay. He just had to get to ten.

Ten heartbeats came and went and Bren could breathe once more. He started to gather up the books, straightening any bent pages, brushing dust from the covers. He let the simple task inflate until it took up every ounce of space in his head, focused utterly on it, allowed no other thoughts inside.

That was the best way to survive.

But then a glint of gold caught his eye. The ticket Mr Tealeaf left had become caught in the fringes of the hall carpet, looking a little forlorn, like a butterfly who’d forgotten how to fly. A few steps brought Bren close enough to read the embossed printing on its surface.

_The Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities. Admit One. All are welcome!_

Before he knew what he was really doing, the ticket was in his hand. Then it was in his pocket.

More thoughts pressed in on him and he fended them off as best he could, drowning them out by reading the titles of each book aloud, carefully ordering them by author then by colour, shifting them around on the shelf.

All the while the ticket stayed in his pocket, feeling far heavier than a little piece of foiled paper should.

 

“Straighten your shoulders, boy. Your feet need to be planted firmly on the ground, how many times do I have to tell you?”

Bren shifted his stance in accordance with Father’s barked instructions, though he’d always felt more comfortable on the balls of his feet where he could change direction more easily.

The ground was cold and hard underneath him, the air chilled. But they had to practise in the basement, there were far too many expensive, important things to break in the rest of the manor.

Magic was dangerous, Father had always drilled that into him before all else. It was only permitted within tight boundaries, under strict rules, compartmentalised and categorised and controlled. Using it carelessly, without understanding, that was for carnival hucksters and hedge wizards, people made to squeeze pennies out of ignorant country folk.

People like Mr Tealeaf, Bren supposed, thinking guiltily of the ticket still in the pocket of his trousers, neatly folded with the rest of his work clothes up in his room.

As he’d dressed for practice, into the loose half trousers and shirt that left him free for movement, Bren made a decision. He’d tear up the ticket as soon as he could, throw the pieces out of his window. Already he was working on three different knots of stress, each one a different scenario where Father discovered he had the ticket and none of them ended well. The risk simply wasn’t worth it. Small acts of rebellion were one thing but outright foolishness was another.

But he’d already been late for practice and hadn’t had the time yet. But he would destroy it. He would.

“We will focus on Evocation spells today,” Father announced, pacing at the other end of the cavernous basement, “Your last essay on that particular subject was poor. Let’s see if something a little more direct will help you see sense.”

“Yes Father,” Bren nodded, holding his hands ready in front of him, mind already flickering through the motions necessary for the main spells he knew.

“Now, I want to see some improvement from our last spar,” Father continued, taking no note of how ready his charge was, how he had dropped into the right stance without needing to be asked, “The last time you were slow to react. It made you clumsy, there was no elegance to it. And-“

His last words were lost to a roar as a burst of fire erupted from his hands and flew towards Bren, straight and furious as a thrown dagger. Bren yelped, all his readiness evaporating as the fire engulfed him, burning where it touched, scorching his skin an angry red before disappearing as its energy ran out.

Raw and tingling, nerves frayed and stinging with the injustice of it, Bren lost his composure, “I wasn’t ready! You gave me no warning!”

“And neither will your enemies, boy,” Father replied simply, letting loose another plume in his direction.

This time Bren dodged, rolling, skin screaming where the rough stone floor scraped against it. As soon as he could, he countered with a thunderclap, making it reverberate through the floor so even if it hit, it would do no more than throw Father off balance. But he couldn’t even manage that. Father simply stilled the vibrations with a blast of his own, the exact frequency to fizzle it out into nothing. And then it was the horrific screeching energy of an eldritch blast, the one that made Bren’s ears ring. Somehow he managed to throw himself underneath it, cowering until it past.

“Like I said,” Father’s voice cut through the screeching as it bounced around the space, “Clumsy. Sloppy.”

Bren covered his face, breathing heavy. It was so unfair. Father did everything he could to break him apart, to knock him back. For him, sparring wasn’t about learning, it was about punishment. Bren didn’t feel like a student, he felt like a punching bag.

It wasn’t _fair._

In that instant, all the anger, all the fear, all the emptiness years of it had hollowed out inside him was filled with something Bren couldn’t name. In the crackling, ozone stinking wake of their spells, he stood, held out his hands and let that something fly from him as he spoke a word he couldn’t recall afterwards. Not the simple spheres that had been thrown before, a sheer wall of flame erupted in the space, roaring its fury as soon as it appeared. For a moment, Father was awash in a bright orange glow.

And he looked terrified.

Bren wavered, uncertainty flooding back into him as the wall exploded out of existence. While the heat washed over him, not even leaving a lingering heat, it struck Father full in the chest, making him stagger and fall back with a cry of pain. Bren cried out with him.

The dungeon was filled with a smoke that reeked of sulphur, hanging heavily in the hair like clumps of fine gossamer. When Father stood, his clothes were singed, his hair was in disarray and there was an angry red mark lancing across his face.

Bren was already at the door, scrabbling at the handle, when Father caught him by the collar and dragged him back.

Though he knew it would only make it worse, at the unbridled fury in Father’s eyes, he desperately babbled out, “I’m sorry! I didn’t…I didn’t mean…”

The backhand hit him harder than any spell, knocking his head against the wall.

As the pain rang through him, a less sensible part of him cried out, “I don’t understand! You want me to be a powerful wizard, why do you hurt me every time I beat you-“

A force lifted him and pinned him to the wall, forcing his jaw shut.

“Don’t you dare,” Father rasped, still smoking slightly, “Don’t you dare utter those words. You are nothing, do you hear me? You are garbage. You are worthless. I am doing everything I can to nurture the miniscule scrap of talent you have and you should be grateful I am wasting my time on a pathetic boy like you. Understand?”

Bren nodded frantically, wincing as the press continued, achingly slow but relentless, caught between the implacable force and the cold stone wall.

And then it was gone. He fell to the floor, wheezing and crying, only able to nod over and over and pray it would be enough.

“Clean yourself up. There will be no dinner for you tonight,” Father snapped, turning and marching away.

Bren was still crying as he staggered to his room, lurching for his bed like it was his last island of safety. He pressed his face to the pillows to muffle the sound, knowing Father would be disgusted to hear it, and gave himself over to the storm inside him.

He knew he’d just performed a fantastic piece of magic, far above anything he’d done before, but there was no joy in it. Just a bitter ashy taste.

All he’d ever wanted was to be as strong a wizard as he could be, learn everything, read every book, find a safety and security in magic he’d never found anywhere else. But it was never going to make Father proud of him. It was never going to make the sharp words, the slaps, the strikes hurt any less.

Bren had never wanted to be somewhere else, someone else so much in his entire life.

That was when, for the second time in the same day, a glint of gold caught his eye.

The ticket was jutting out of the pocket of Bren’s abandoned trousers, like it was trying to wriggle to freedom. He could still read half of it, upside down but still, black niello letters etched into the gold.

_All are welcome!_

Bren tucked the ticket into his latest banned book, slipped it into his ratty old coat, the one Father didn’t let him wear. He swung it around himself, hood up, tucking his distinctive red hair into his scarf. Everyone in the district knew Archmage Ikithon’s red haired ward.

The night air was cold, reproachful, as he opened his window. But Bren didn’t stop, he didn’t even pause, he had to move before Father stopped stewing in his anger and put up the wards around his room to stop him going to get food. Out there was music and light and colour, out there was the furthest thing from in here that there could possibly be.

Out there was Mr Tealeaf, who’d looked at him and smiled kindly.

That’s what he needed right now. So that’s where he went.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bren finds his new name and his new home

It was as if the evening had its own beating heart. 

Perhaps it stood out so much because such sounds had never been heard before in Rexxantrum, at least not in living memory. Or maybe just not since the Empire had taken hold of the city. Either way, the sudden thrum and pulse of music called to the people of the district, drawing them towards the market square at the time when most of them would be staggering to their homes or the nearest pub. 

With every beat, the heart that had just taken up residence in the dead centre of the district pressed music and colour out through the streets and alleyways. Lanterns with the same loud pronouncement of welcome as the ticket bobbed though the gathering dusk, their bright paper making them appear as oddly shaped, fantastical fish. The sprightly voices of lute, violin, flute, lyre and drum beckoned to the folk of Rexxantrum, causing feet to tap and heads to nod involuntarily for a mile around. And peeking above the tops of the buildings, the vast purple and gold expanse of a truly enormous sailcloth tent could be seen, swaying in time with the music, the centre of it all. 

It wasn’t hard to know where to go.

Bren kept his coat tight around him and the scarf shielding his face. Any eye that so much as skirted over him filled him with a roiling, sickening sense of dread. All it would take was one glimpse by the wrong person and the word would fly back to Father. People loved to gossip about those on the rung above them so whether it was someone who despised Father or a toady looking to curry favour with him, the result would be the same and Bren would likely never feel outside air in his lungs again. 

But his heart had never ached for something so much as it ached now, for just one night of escape. He felt like if he turned back now, if he returned to his tower room and that cold, empty manor house, then he’d know he was truly broken.

Bren wasn’t ready to let go of that little flame just yet. 

The music grew thicker the closer he got to the market square. Now there were large bubbles like strange fruit dancing on the evening breeze, bright streamers thrown across the roofs, voices chattering, and not just in Common, and the scent of mouth-watering spice on the air. 

A makeshift fence had been thrown up around the main plaza of the city with several openings through which the crowd was being filtered. Bren avoided the biggest and most central, being manned by a gnome gentleman with purple livery who was calling out friendly insults to the people who came through as he took their coins. Instead he went through the back where the press was thinner. The guard here was an almost impossibly tall woman with waist length hair, threaded with beads, and a placid face that somehow managed to hold just enough of a whispered threat to make her incredible at her job. Bren had no doubt that everyone filtering past her assumed she was a human but he’d read enough to recognise an Aasimar when he saw one. The fact that she was here implied all sorts, none of which were good. 

“Five coppers for a ticket,” she announced as Bren came close.

“I…I already have one,” Bren showed her the ticket, which he’d been keeping up his sleeve, “But I can pay as well if you need me to?”

The woman looked sceptical, “We only give tickets out to officials and dignitaries. Which one would you be, pray?”

Bren felt his face go red and he stammered, “I’m…I’m…um…I’m the Archmage’s ward.” 

The woman raised an eyebrow. Mutely, Caleb fished five coppers from his emergency supply of money in his pockets and tipped them into the woman’s hand. 

“Enjoy the show. Please leave all weapons here and they will be returned to you.” 

“I don’t have any weapons,” Bren mumbled, praying he wasn’t about to be taken by the ankles and shaken.

“Yes. I assumed so,” the woman replied simply, tilting her head.

Red as a winter berry, Bren ducked into the tent. 

 

Inside, the smell of spices was even stronger and Bren soon saw why. A firbolg- the second person he’d seen that day who, until now, had only existed in storybooks- was wandering around with a banal smile on his face, exchanging coins held out to him for some of the small, squat cakes in the tray hanging from his shoulders. 

“Made ‘em myself,” he said in an almost impossibly low voice, holding one out to Bren. 

Trying desperately hard not to stare at the broad, almost bovine face, the long pink tresses of hair, the wide, expansive ears, Bren fumbled for his payment but the firbolg chuckled and shook his head.

“No charge. You look like you could use it.” 

Before Bren could protest, insist on paying, the firbolg had wandered away, back to picking his way through the tiers of benches, trying not to step on the children already running excitedly through the stalls. 

He took a seat on the bench with the most empty space around it. He didn’t do well in crowds at all, he got itchy skin if other bodies pressed to close to him; uncomfortable questions would surface in his mind like what would happen if there was a sudden fire nearby or if the roof caved in or anything else disastrous. 

But his carefully laid plan began to fall apart as more and more people streamed into the tent. It seemed like everyone in Rexxantrum was here tonight- crownsguard, farmers, market folk. Even some of the people who ran in Father’s circles with their finely dressed children and wards, done up like little dolls and held on laps if they were small enough, hands held if they were not; bought cakes and balloons and hugged and comforted, confined in, how precious they were on display for everyone to see. Bren looked down at his hands. 

The crowd began to cease its flow and settle into its place on the climbing benches, all eyes turned down to the centre ring, currently shrouded in a thick, black curtain embroidered with stars, looking how the night sky was always meant to look but could never quite get there in real life. But Bren’s eyes were flickering nervously, never settling in one place, realising just how close the crowd was pressing around him.

But he couldn’t run. He couldn’t. He could either be here or he could return to the manse and resign himself to being a coward and another man’s plaything for the rest of his life. Bren couldn’t imagine anything worse than the intermediate between those two, fleeing the tent and suddenly finding himself utterly adrift in the dusk outside with no plan and nowhere to go. 

Terror was better than uncertainty, he’d always felt.

But he did have one last rope to cling to. Father didn’t know he knew this spell, Bren would bet his life on that. He would have called it frivolous magic, a waste of the precious, precious gift he’d been given. It was in none of the spell books around the manse, the ones where Bren could see the gaps in the bindings where pages had been cut away. He’d copied it from a library book in the dead of night, under his blanket, with paper and ink purchased from a passing tinker so it couldn’t be traced back to him. Of course he only used it sparingly but knowing he had the potential had eased the knot of tension he always carried in his chest by just a little bit. 

Which, of course, was the best he could hope for.

He made the motions with his fingers and spoke the words in his mind. Bren had become an expert at silent magic, mostly for the security of knowing he wouldn’t be overheard. As difficult as it was, the sense of safety was worth it. 

It took some effort, repeating the words over and over in his head but eventually, with a burst of soft blue light, a cat appeared in Bren’s lap. A beautiful cat with a wide, kind face and bright yellow eyes like two gold pieces, a dappled pattern on its rusty brown fur, rich and shifting under the low light. Immediately, just as he hoped he would, the cat put its paws on Bren’s shoulders and began to nuzzle at his rough, unshaven jaw. 

“Hello Frumpkin,” Bren murmured softly, already able to breathe a little better. He pulled the flap of his coat over the cat, hiding him from view. If weapons weren’t allowed in the tent, he was certain magical familiars wouldn’t be.

He couldn’t say where the name Frumpkin had come. He knew it was the kind of name a child would give a cloth toy, something silly and nonsensical. But he also kind of liked it. He’d never had a toy, he’d never had something to cling to and comfort him. And now he did.

He just held Frumpkin to him, cradling him, using the soft purring to slow his heartbeat and keep him grounded as the crowd settled around him. The minutes ticked past and with every one, the sense of anticipation thickened until it was barely breathable. Excitement that was a hair’s breadth away from fear strung them all together, keeping them all tied and tense and waiting, eyes fixed on whatever lay behind that curtain. It got to the point where Bren thought there was no way the show could live up to the expectation it had built. 

“My, my, my. What a wonderful crowd we’ve got here tonight.”

The voice was amplified, booming through the tent, making everyone jump. It wasn’t coming from the centre ring, where they’d all been looking, but somewhere else. A sudden spotlight appeared to guide their darting, rolling eyes, swinging across the assembled crowd and up into the beams overhead. 

The tiefling from before was reclining lazily on a platform high above them all and Bren’s heart skipped a beat or two. 

He was dressed much like before but with an extra flair to it. There was gold piping along the purple velvet coat and a plethora of detailed embroidery along its surface, the leggings were spangled with countless sequins and the boots were scaled elaborately. The hat was the same though, slightly battered and the ribbon around its base was frayed but so clearly loved. 

He looked beautiful. 

“We’ll have to work extra hard to put on a show deserving of all you lovely folk. A tall baton appeared from nowhere and sparks shot out playfully when he rapped it on the wood of the platform, “But then again…”

He took a step into thin air and plummeted. A gasp erupted from the crowd and Feather Fall was already on Bren’s lips until it became clear the tiefling was gripping a thick rope, flying not falling, effortlessly like a trapeze artist. He careened towards the focus of the tent, somehow totally in control of his movements even though all that was propelling him was gravity. He landed neatly on the sand of the centre ring, revealed in a rush as the curtain lifted and disappeared into nothingness, revealing a full ensemble of colourful folk, each of them poised and grinning. 

“That’s exactly what we do,” Mr Tealeaf called brightly.

 

Bren, so usually ruled by time and routine and regulation, found himself completely and blissfully lost to it all for the first time in his life. Watching the Fletching and Moondrop troupe felt like all the things he’d never got to do coming back to him in one wonderful rush; it was like lying on his back in the middle of a daisy field on a warm summer’s day with nothing to do and nowhere to go, it was like watching snow fall outside a window while curled up in a blanket, it was like waking up to no alarm in a warm, comfortable bed and knowing your time, your life was completely yours. 

It was like all the small places storybooks had told him happiness could be found. Bren had never understood the truth of that, he’d had no evidence of it in his own life, until he went to the circus. 

There was a little goblin girl dressed up in colourful makeup and loud, bright patterns who told scathing jokes that made everyone howl with laughter. There was a blue tiefling girl and a lithe young human woman who moved through trapezes strung high up above as easily as walking down a street. There was a tall half orc who juggled large, deadly looking swords before finally dropping one down his own throat effortlessly, to the delight of the crowd. There was a terrifying performance where a beautiful, dark-haired half elf man faced down an enormous, roaring sabre toothed tiger with nothing but a whip, dancing around it, narrowly avoiding being savaged until, at the very last moment, when it looked like he was done for, the beast transformed into a laughing, red haired druid woman who caught her companion in her arms and bowed low, turning the screams of the crowd to a roar of amusement. There was another half elf who looked so like the first they had to be brother and sister who did fantastical feats of archery, firing arrows while on the back of a lumbering bear, hitting targets as they flew through the air and finally, in a particularly hair raising display, shot arrows at a target with a bemused looking, white haired gentleman tied to it, missing him narrowly but cleanly every time, earning a kiss from him every time she did so. There was a heavily tattooed strongman who lifted incredible weights, only then to be shown up by a white haired gnome woman who ran rings around him, to the laughter of the crowd. There was a sweet faced dwarven girl who sang so gently there wasn’t a dry eye to be found in the tent. 

There were intervals scattered throughout the performance, where a seemingly never ending supply of cakes and sweet goodies could be bought from the kind firbolg from before. There was also an array of fantastic arcane goods to be purchased from another firbolg merchant who was practically a performance in himself, given that there were four of him, dealing with various startled clientele. Bren was in kind of a dreamlike state during those times, though he couldn’t help but be entranced by the wares he had. He could hear Father’s voice in the back of his head, stern and scathing, decrying each and every one as trinkets and wastes of arcane energy. But Bren saw the smiles on the children’s faces, the relief of tired looking folk who purchased healing potions at discounts, the shouts of awe and delight and amusement. 

This was what magic should be, a part of him murmured, small and slight but somehow louder than the echoing voice of Father. 

But then, thankfully, the show began again and he could ignore thoughts like that for a while. 

It was the last performance of the night that left the biggest imprint on him. After all the startling, extravagant displays, the ending was simple and soft, exactly what was needed. Mr Tealeaf took the stage, alone for the first time since the very beginning. He’d been introducing each new act, weaving it all together into a narrative, their iridescent guide through it all. But now it was just him and a fine lute of deep gold wood that shone in the low light. He sat himself on a stool right in the centre of a spotlight the colour of moon glow and played a song that wrenched at nearly everyone’s heart and none more than Bren’s.

He sang of the importance of stories, of the doors they opened and the freedom they brought. He sang of a small boy who could never see the worth in himself, who was lost and scared and sad until he heard the right story. He sang with a voice that no one could call technically perfect, it was rusty and worn around the edges but it was warmth itself, it was safety and protection and light. 

And in the middle of his song, as those shining eyes scanned the crowd, they fell on Bren. Everything around them seemed to fall away for a long moment, the moment in between the notes, and Mr Tealeaf smiled and winked. Even with all the faces between them, Bren knew it was just for him. 

After his song, Mr Tealeaf bowed low and thanked them all sincerely for coming to the show. The curtain swept back into place from whatever nothing it had been residing in and the lights came up again. 

The crowd filtered away, dozing children being carried by parents, sweethearts hand in hand, everyone chattering happily about their favourite performances. Bren didn’t move, still petting Frumpkin with fingers more flitting and anxious now. 

Because now came the difficult part. 

He’d done it, he’d proven he wasn’t completely lost to Father yet. Which was something. But now he had to sneak back into the manse, avoiding the warding spells and wiping any trace of guilt from his face or his mannerisms- a physically difficult thing- and return to his life, knowing everything he was missing out on- a mentally difficult thing. Of course he was glad he’d done this, he wouldn’t trade this experience for anything, no matter what the consequences were. Father could be waiting on the doorstep when he returned and Bren would still consider tonight a gain. It was the saying goodbye to it all that he dreaded. To the point where he was still sat there, with most of the people around him gone, massaging Frumpkin’s thick fur and willing himself to stand. 

Just a minute earlier and they might have missed each other and everything would have been different.  

been different.  

“I’m so glad you made it.”

Bren started, turning around and finding Mr Tealeaf behind him. It was in that moment he was startled by just how close in age they were, there couldn’t have been more than a couple of years between them. Out of the spotlight, in nothing but loose, comfortable pants and a simple linen shirt, his makeup streaked and hair matted to his forehead with sweat, he looked so young. His smile was shy and sweet. 

“I…oh, thank you…” Bren stammered, mind scrambling for something sensible to say, “I didn’t realise you…you’d noticed me yesterday…” 

Mr Tealeaf smiled, turning his hat in his hands, “Of course I noticed you. You’re just the kind of guy I like to see in my audience.”

“And who would that be?” Bren had to ask.

“Someone who needs a night off.”

Bren gave a nervous laugh, “Well…it really was a brilliant show, Mr Tealeaf. You have a fantastic voice.” Compliments were always a safe way to go with a conversation. 

“Mollymauk, please,” he put a hand on his chest, “Or Molly. And you are?”

“Caleb Widogast.” 

He had no idea where the name had come from, how it rose to the tip of his tongue without a moment’s hesitation. He’d realise a little bit later that it was the names of two protagonists from two different books stitched together but how and why it found him just then, he’d never quite work out. 

“Caleb,” Mollymauk smiled broadly, “What a lovely name!”

Bren felt absurdly guilty. 

“Thank you…” he smiled, hoping it wasn’t too obviously fake, “This was a really special night. I’m so glad I got to see it. Honestly, five coppers don’t seem like nearly enough…” 

He realised that he was starting to babble and clamped down on his lower lip, Father’s admonition echoing in his ears. 

“Well, Caleb,” Mollymauk’s smile shifted a little, “I think I have a way you could…level the scales a little? If you were interested? No pressure, of course, simply an offer.”

“Oh?” Bren tipped his head. 

“Would you like to spend the night with me?” Molly’s tail swayed from side to side, “In my tent?”

“Doing what?” he asked amiably, expression blank.

Molly blinked, looking a little nonplussed, tips of his teeth showing through his slightly dismayed smile, “Well…having sex was the idea…”

Bren wondered just how many times he could embarrass himself in one night. 

“I…um…I…well, that’s, ah…”

He felt like his brain had been split neatly down the middle, into the half that was becoming more and more his own and the half that was mostly Father. A half that wanted to give a resounding, desperate yes and a half that was drawing back in panic. A half that was wondering if this entire night was one wonderful dream and a half that was wondering just how much more he could bear before he broke entirely. 

The result of the war between these halves was complete and utter confusion.

“It was simply an offer,” Mollymauk insisted carefully, looking uncertain. It was such an odd expression to see on a face made for confidence and certainty, “Please don’t feel obligated, you’re just very handsome and just my type and…and I thought I got a vibe from you but I must have been mistaken…”

“No!” Bren managed to manipulate his tongue that suddenly seemed twice its usual size into making words, “I…I am interested. I would…I like men.” 

Had he ever actually said that out loud before? He didn’t think so. He’d barely even thought it before, true as it was. But then again, some things were easier to say out loud than admit to yourself. It had been remarkably painless. 

“Ah,” Mollymauk nodded, “Just not…tieflings?”

“No!” Bren wanted to tug on his hair but that would just compound the look of mania that was already pretty strong, “I just…I’ve never ever…done this. At all. With anyone. Of any race.”

Mollymauk’s expression cleared, eyes filling with understanding, “Oh. I see. Well, that’s perfectly okay, Caleb. I’d be happy to take you through it, as it were. If that’s what you’d like, I mean, not feeling ready is completely understandable.”

Bren had to fight a sardonic burst of laughter. There was not feeling ready and then there was the maelstrom of emotions currently crashing in his chest. 

He tried to enter the cool, calm state of mind he entered when he was casting spells. The one that felt like sinking into ice water when the rest of the world was flame. He tried to let the honesty bubble to the surface, the very essence of everything he was, the part of him that spoke to the arcane. 

“I would like to accept your offer,” that part of him answered, “If you’d have me.”

Well, for better or worse, there was the answer the deep parts of him wanted. He plunged all thoughts of the manse, Father, who might see them, what people might think to a faraway part of his mind. For at least an hour or two, they couldn’t follow him. 

Mollymauk’s face broke into a broad, clear smile, “Mr Caleb, it would be my pleasure.”

Backstage was every bit as raucous as the circus in full swing. Clearly celebrations for a job well done were in fully swing. 

The simple coat and muted colours Bren had worn to keep himself inconspicuous suddenly betrayed him and made him stick out like a sore thumb in amongst all the extravagant costumes, still on for the afterparty. He felt eyes on him from all around the small changing space behind the main performance area, sly, amused eyes that made him suddenly aware that they all knew why he was here backstage, with Mollymauk’s hand in his. 

“My quarters are just through here,” the tiefling murmured under the rabble, “Benefits of being ringleader, I get my own space…”

The further into the press they went, the closer they got to the performers Bren recognised. The half elves that looked so scarily similar were lounging in one corner with glasses of wine, the scholarly looking young man who had been the female’s target lying back with his head in her lap. 

“Molly, darling, come have a drink,” she called, raising her glass to him. 

“Maybe later, gorgeous,” he called in reply, fluttering his fingers, “Got something to do first.”

“Oh, so his name is Something?” her brother returned, grinning, to a gale of laughter. 

“Ignore them, sweetling,” Molly rolled his eyes with some fondness, seeing Bren’s face turn scarlet and holding the flap open so he could duck in, throwing a rude gesture in the direction of his performers. 

A few more tunnels of purple silk and the noise of the party died down, muffled by more and more fabric. Finally, they squirmed out of the tent’s embrace entirely, the night sky above them. Carefully hidden from the rest of the square, sheltered by the tent was a little village on wheels. All of the caravans were functionally the same but had their own personality to them, sharing a piece of whoever lived within them. Molly’s was no different. It was painted gold and purple of course, a deep plum colour to the wood and gilded accents wherever they could be conceivably squeezed in. There were also stars painted all over it, in a paint that glowed in the dark. 

Molly opened the door and gestured grandly for Bren to go first, “After you.”

There was even more personality inside, so much so that there was hardly room for it all. A miniscule kitchen was pushed down to one end with a small gas stove, pots and pans and mugs hanging from the ceiling overhead in a way that made Bren’s back ache just thinking about it. The other end was a large bed, plush and inviting with its hand knitted blankets and piles of silk pillows and gossamer hangings. The high shelves were completely devoted to books, candles, scarves, lanterns, jewellery, the collected nick knacks of a life spent on the road and the whole place smelled of rich incense. 

“It isn’t much,” Mollymauk smiled, hanging his hat on a hook above the door, “But its mine.” 

“I think it’s wonderful,” Bren breathed, eyes wide, unable to quite believe all of the colour, the warmth, the comfort. 

“You’re sweet,” he got a fond chuckle in response and a gentle hand on the small of his back, “Now, just to make sure you’re entirely up to speed…”

Bren have a soft affirmative noise, a little too lost in that hand on him, the first gentle touch he could remember in so long. 

“I’m trans,” Molly turned him gently so he could look into his eyes, “So, what I’m working with, it might not be entirely what you’re expecting. I need to know if that’s going to be a problem for you.”

“Not at all,” Bren shook his head. His body was making it quite plain just how attracted he was to Mollymauk in a way that was unfamiliar and a little dizzying but he was prepared to just run with.

“Good,” Molly smiled. Bren had never met someone who smiled as much as this tiefling did. He was finding himself joining in, “Now you seem a little nervous, Caleb…”

“Yeah…” Bren bit his lip. The name was starting to sound less and less strange in his ears, “I’ve just never done this before…”

“And that’s okay,” Molly nodded firmly, hands now gently brushing his cheeks, “If anything happens that you’re not comfortable with, all you have to do is say so and I will stop immediately. I’ll guide you but you’re entirely in control. Talk to me, tell me what feels good, tell me if you’re not into something. This is about us, both having a good time. Okay, Caleb?”

Bren was still for a very, very long moment. He was casting his mind back, trying to think to the last time someone had been so gentle with him, when someone had told him he was in control, that he could choose what happened to him. 

“Okay, Molly,” he nodded, heart ready to burst with gratitude. 

 

Bren, who so rarely experienced anything more than a blunted contentment, discovered half a million new sources of delight that night. The trailing of soft lips down his neck, the movement of fingers, deceptively thin but hiding muscle and callus of hard work, threading thought his hair. A tail winding around his leg to anchor him and keep him secured when the pleasure got so intense he was scared he’d break apart at the seams. Heat and slick enveloping the most sensitive parts of him, parts he’d been too frightened to explore even by himself, knees squeezing around his hips, hot breath mingling with his own in between kisses. A name that wasn’t his own but meant for him leaving kiss swollen lips, sweat from another person’s skin speckling on his. 

Just the presence of another body hopelessly tangled up with his, so he lost all sense of everything that weighed him down, all that was left was the sense that another soul wanted the best for him. That he was cared for, placed at the centre of everything, made the most important thing in the world. 

And the last but by no means the least, the simple bliss of lying in an exhausted haze after nearly a full night of sex, with the arms of a lover wrapped around his middle, their head pillowed between his shoulder blades. Smiling like he’d forgotten how to stop, Bren watched a crystal turn on the ribbon it was suspended from, watching the moonlight caught and replicated within its depths, a whole infinity within such tightly set boundaries. His arms began to itch. 

“Why did you keep these on?”

Bren turned, “I thought you were asleep…”

Molly pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades, fingers still tracing the tight bandages around Bren’s forearms, the ones he didn’t even feel any more, “Nope. You tired me out, sweetling, but not that much.”

Bren raised an eyebrow, smirking, “Come on, I had zero experience. I can’t have been that good.”

“You were sweet and generous and honest. That’s all I require in my one night stands.” 

One night. Bren knew that had always been part of the conditions but it was a dull ache nonetheless.  

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Molly pointed out, “Why do you wear these? Healing tattoos?”

“No,” Bren murmured, “I…” A plausible lie couldn’t come to him fast enough and tired, vulnerable, he decided to trust the safety net Molly had laid out for him, “I don’t think I’m ready to talk about that right now.”

The tiefling simply nodded, kissing between his shoulders again, “Very well…though can I ask something else? Not exactly related but…close.”

Bren stiffened a little and not in the same way as he’d done a few times earlier in the night. He gave a hesitant nod.

“Does it have something to do with the Archmage you live with? Mr Ikithon?”

His lower lip began to tremble. Everything was running closer to the surface tonight, it was all so much harder to control and keep contained, in the little boxes everything needed to stay in for things to be okay. 

“And the…the scars and bruises…” Molly continued, voice softer and sadder like he already had his answer, “Are those to do with him too?”

“It’s only when I’m bad,” the ridiculous need to defend Father surged the words out of him, forcing Bren to speak even though his throat was tight and his eyes were already brimming, “He’s…he’s being so good to me, training me to be a wizard and I disobey him, I don’t do things right so he has to hurt me but it’s all to help me, to make me stronger…”

“Oh,” Molly’s voice was a whisper. 

His arms were throbbing now.

“I was an orphan, I had nowhere to go, I would have ended up on the streets if it wasn’t for Father. He’s helping me, I make him hurt me by being bad, it’s all my fault…”

The words weren’t his. For all the times he’d said them, they’d never been his. Why was he only just realising that now?

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault-“

There was a hand on his hip, turning him around so they were facing each other, close enough for their noses to nearly touch. 

“I don’t want to stop you,” Molly spoke in something like his stage voice, ensuring he could be heard and understood, “You need to get this off your chest, Caleb, I can see that but I want to tell you something first. Is that okay?”

He bit his lip and nodded, his breaths coming in shuddery tremors. 

“None of this is your fault,” Molly held his face in his hands, “What that man has done to you is cruel and unfair and  _ wrong.  _ And I know that’s hard for you to hear right now and you might not believe me and there’s no reason you should have to seeing as I’m a stranger and all. But I have to say it. No one should ever hurt the people they’ve said they’ll protect. They should never make them feel the way he makes you feel. He’s been lying to you. You deserve so much better and…and I’d like to give it to you.”

He swallowed hard, unsure he’d really heard that last part, “What?”

Molly dropped his hands and sat up and a raw whine of panic ripped from his throat. Immediately the tiefling began to stroke his hair, “Sorry, sorry, it’s okay, I’m here. I just wanted to get…” 

His hand groped further down the bed until it found his top hat, brought into the bed sometime during their escapades last night on a flirtatious whim where Molly had decided to introduce his new lover the way he introduced his performers. He tried to dredge up the way he’d laughed at that, tried to remember how it had felt but the sadness was too raw and too thick. Instead, he focused on how Molly turned the hat over in his free hand, the other still stroking his hair soothingly. 

“Caleb, the reason I joined this circus was because I needed a fresh start too. And when it passed into my hands, I promised myself that I was going to make it a safe place for people to forget their troubles and leave rotten pasts behind. For our audiences and our performers too. Nearly everyone who works with me has something they’re here to get away from. I could make a place for you here, if you’d like that?” 

He could see the line being offered to him, the way out of the darkness. He just didn’t know if he was brave enough to reach for it, when it could so easily lead to him falling. 

“What…what would I do?”

Molly smiled, “You’re a wizard, huh? Our current arcanist gave his notice in a while ago, he’s running off with one of my better performers so they can go get married, the bastards. As long as you can make a shower of sparks on time and maybe do a little vanishing, that would be a huge help to me.” 

“I’d…get to use magic? That’s allowed?” 

“Of course,” Molly tilted his head, his smile growing as he reached out and placed his hat on top of his head, “You’ve been given a wonderful gift, Caleb. You’re allowed to use that to make people smile. I think that would be good for you.” 

“But…my Father…you don’t know how furious he’d be…he’s a powerful man…”

Molly shrugged, “Not to blow my own trumpet but I know some pretty powerful people too. A writ of performance covers up a lot of awkward questions and lets us travel wherever we please. I can have everything packed down and loaded up in less than an hour, we’ll be away before dawn even breaks. Before your…father has any notion that you’re even gone, we can be lost in the northern forests. And…” his smile twitched up, “I don’t think Caleb is the name he knows you by, am I right?”

His cheeks darkened, the lie hadn’t even lasted a night, “No…”

Molly flicked his tail playfully, “And will he really want the news that his ward ran off to join the circus to spread all over the place?”

“No,” the realisation broke through like a ray of warm sun. Father would keep it as tightly under wraps as he could, the shame would be more than enough to guarantee that.

Molly reached out and took his hands, “Then come with me, Caleb Widogast. Come make people smile with me. Come see the world, see if we can’t find the happiness you deserve. And of course…” an edge of shyness crept into his smile, “As long as we were working together…my bed would always be available to you? Just until we get you a wagon of your own, of course…”

Part of him was still wailing about the risk. Behind him was certainty, even with the bite it had, it was the surety of a bed every night, food on the table, more lessons every day. Ahead was…shifting shadows. But in them he could glimpse a future, one where he was his own man, where he didn’t have to hide parts of himself or appear presentable, where he didn’t have to live with fear flavouring every moment. With someone who could make him feel the way he felt last night. 

“Okay,” said Caleb Widogast, “I’ll join your circus.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb settles into circus life

Caleb had come up with a new game.

He sat on top of Mollymauk’s wagon, legs swinging over the side, Frumpkin on his lap and watched a world he’d always read about but never seen unfold before him. Every time the large, gilded wheels would strike a dip in the road, he’d repeat his new name in his head. 

_ Caleb…Caleb Widogast…I’m Caleb… _

He was starting to get used to it, the way a pair of new boots would eventually start to soften and yield and accept him. The syllables felt kinder in his mouth, he liked the swing and slide of the soft plosive. Sitting there atop his new home, feeling a rare burst of autumn sunshine on his skin, his cat purring loudly at not having to be hidden away, Caleb could almost forget he’d ever had another name. 

True to his word, Mollymauk had roused his sleepy and rather hungover crew in the early, clinging, dark hours of the morning, walking through the little village of caravans, banging his baton against a large bucket and hollering for them to get their arses up and moving. Caleb had stayed firmly in the wagon with the blanket pulled up over his head, wondering if it would have been possible to make a worse impression on his new colleagues. 

But as soon as they were on their feet and had their fill of cursing Molly out, the circus was so neatly and quickly folded away it had to be magically assisted, all the floating lanterns recalled with a single whistle, the huge hall of purple silk brought down and shrunk until it was a hundredth of its initial size, all the trinkets and trappings swept safely away to sleep until their next stop. Still with his very unpopular bucket and baton, standing on top of the tallest wagon- made to house and transport the large tent, Caleb learnt- Molly had announced they were heading south, asking his troupe how they fancied a warmer clime for their next show, to general agreeable cheers. 

And so they’d set off, only dozing crownsguard in the midst of their watches and a few farmers and fishermen heading out to field and lake to see them go. Caleb’s chest had been tight, almost unbearably so, until the landscape outside became unfamiliar. He’d lived in Rexxantrum and never left since he was three years old, he knew every single cobblestone of its streets. If he couldn’t recognise what was past the gauzy silk of Molly’s curtains, he was safe. 

Eventually, once the day had well and truly broken, Mollymauk had returned after making a round of the whole troupe, helping with odds and ends, trading jokes back and forth, hailing travellers on the road, telling them to look out for the Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities in his booming stage voice. He was a very hands on leader, Caleb was realising, always in the thick of things. He tried to imagine him running things the way Father did, from behind a desk, dealing only with a carefully managed stream of constituents in and out of his office. Something about that image was oddly funny, just for how ridiculous it was. 

Caleb ran his hand down Frumpkin’s back, from between his flat little ears right to the tip of his tail. Thinking of Father still sparked old instincts, nerves that hadn’t quite gone dormant yet. He wondered how far they would have to travel, how many new types of flower he’d have to spy along the roadside, how many strange tongues he’d have to hear in passing before he’d feel safe. 

He didn’t think he’d like the answer to that. 

The wheel hit another rut in the road and he sank back into his game, letting the repetition of it soothe him. 

_ Caleb Widogast…I’m Caleb…I’m- _

“Caleb!”

He opened his eyes and looked down. Molly was waving to him from the ground, smiling up at him. His travelling clothes were about as plain as the tiefling got, tight black leggings and an overtunic of forest green, still with the fantastical embroidery Caleb suspected was Molly’s own doing, high boots made for function rather than fashion. 

“The Whitestone lot are leaving, come say hi! And then goodbye in very quick succession!”

Though he climbed down from the roof, using the large wheel as a step, and followed Molly into the thick of the rolling encampment, Caleb was nervous. His run ins with the rest of the troupe had been very few and far between, as he hoped to limit the number of them who realised they were being labelled as aiding and abetting a kidnapping just by being in his presence. 

Molly was standing a little ways away with the half elf siblings and the tall, white haired gentleman, all of them in the midst of a conversation that Caleb caught the end of as he approached, Frumpkin wound around him like a scarf. 

“You’re so good to keep indulging us like this, darling,” the female elf was saying as she kissed both of Molly’s cheeks, “We had a wonderful time.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Molly waved her thanks away, “The show’s always that much brighter for having you in it,” he shot a grin at the white haired man, “All of you.”

The man stroked a close cropped beard, chuckling ruefully, “I keep telling my wife, I only come along to help with mechanical repairs and she keeps press ganging me into her performance…”

“Oh, you love being part of it, Perce,” she swiped a loving hand over his hair, “And no one can say you’re not well rewarded.” The way her hooded eyes grew warm and teasing made the nature of such rewards very clear. 

“Please don’t,” her brother groaned, “I had to hear enough of that last night. I keep begging for my wagon not to be next to yours but every damn time…”

The group dissolved into good natured laughter which gave Molly the chance to draw back and pull Caleb into the conversation, “Sweetling, may I introduce the not so venerable and supposedly sophisticated Baron and Baroness of Whitestone, Vex'ahlia and Percival. And her brother, Vax’ildan, a mere mortal like the rest of us.”

Caleb’s heart dropped to his shoes, “Wait…what? I…I thought…”

Vax’ildan chuckled, “A shock I know. My sister and lover boy over here keep skipping out on their baronly duties to come slum it with us humble performers. Because they know we have more fun, even if they do get to live in a ginormous, fancy castle.” 

“Says the man whose about to get married and live rent free in our ginormous castle,” Vex’ahlia shot back, flicking his ear. 

“My future husband is an honourable working man,” he returned huffily, “No one ever said I had to be.”

Molly gave Caleb a look of fond exasperation, one that made him feel included and part of something in a way he’d never felt before. It was a welcome respite from the hammering of his heart. The only nobles Caleb had ever met- back before he changed his name- were cold, sneering people much like Father who all looked at him like he was a particularly amusing pet Father kept trotting out to entertain them all whenever they’d visit Rexxantrum, a charity case and nothing more. Though it was clear that the de Rolo’s were nothing like this, he still would have appreciated a heads up that he was about to be face to face with some of the most important people outside of the empire. 

“Well, we’d best get going, Gilmore’s transportation spell will only hold for so long,” Percy said firmly, in the practised tones of someone who’d had a lot of experience breaking up tussles between the two siblings. 

“Of course, of course,” Vex’ahlia nodded, turning back to Molly and giving him another set of kisses, “Until next time, darling. Happy travels.” 

“Don’t let it be too long,” Molly nodded, smiling.

Caleb watched them go, still a little dizzy from the shock. 

“Vax’s fiancé was our previous arcanist,” Molly explained softly as their companions walked off, “Shaun Gilmore, a real good guy. They’re settling down in Whitestone, opening up a store. Means I’m out two performers which is rotten luck but, hey, it means I get to work with you.” He smiled at that, squeezing Caleb’s hand fondly , perhaps recognising the worn look on his lover’s face. 

“They’re…not like other nobles I’ve met,” Caleb took a deep breath, “It’s strange…” 

Molly laughed, teeth flashing, “Oh sweetling, we’re all strange here. Didn’t you know?”

 

Caleb was surprised by how quickly the carnival could move. It seemed at first like a lumbering beast, made up of far too many parts, parts that were old and splintering and listing on their wheels. The great cartloads of supplies to keep them all fed, pulled by motheaten donkeys that seemed to dislike Caleb upon first glance so he steered well away from, the wagons that held all the equipment for the show itself, ready to unfurl at a moment’s notice like a butterfly straining at the walls of its cocoon. And of course the caravans, all done up in chipping paint, such seemingly small and unwieldy containers for people’s entire lives, looking like squat insects on frighteningly delicate legs. Most of these ran on spells, the wood enchanted to roll along of its own accord until halted by a knocking on its door frame though some preferred the relative reliability of a horse. Fortunately for Caleb and his newly developed equinophobia, Molly preferred the latter. 

But for all its patchwork nature, the way it ran on mismatched spell work and machinery, no part of it still with all its original components, the carnival and its occupants knew their business. Each part was like a limb or a digit of a whole organism, all somehow knowing how to move and work together, probably from simple experience. If that was the case then Mollymauk’s purple caravan, always right at the front, was the brain.

When he saw a tree in their path, he sent orders down the line and everyone obeyed. When he saw dusk falling and a suitable field up ahead, he called a halt for the night and everyone obeyed. When he saw a group of merchants or traders or farm folk travelling in the opposite direction, he sent down the familiar cry of ‘game faces on’ and everyone obeyed, usually resulting in their coffers being a few coins richer once the other party had continued on their way. 

Though he’d spoken of getting Caleb his own wagon once they’d passed through a large enough village, that had happened a good few times and nothing had been said of it, both men realising silently that they liked their current arrangement a little too much to break it. So Caleb got to lounge on Mollymauk’s comfortable bed, his back against the wall, light coming in through the windows as he pretended to read but instead listened to Mollymauk command his circus with a smile and a joke. He got to watch their lumbering beast break from forest into moorland, got to watch the air grow warmer and the flowers grow brighter, he got to feel part of it all. 

Routine had been how he’d survived under Ikithon and the loss of it had made some still scared, still anxious part of his mind fret. But he’d soon found another one, one that made him much happier than anyone ever had. 

Caleb would wake in Molly’s arms, not to a shrill alarm but whenever his body felt like it, catching up on years’ worth of hard days on four hours of sleep, five on a Sunday. He’d stay wrapped in the warmth of the blankets, lying on his front as Frumpkin curled up between his shoulder blades, watching and listening as Mollymauk washed and dressed, telling him stories and chatting about his plans for the day. The tiefling never seemed to run out of words and he wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts. Caleb loved that about him, he loved being confided in. It didn’t matter if it was the smallest, silliest thing, he wanted to know what Molly thought about their route, about the Empire, about the idea of eggs for breakfast. 

But then Molly would leave to do a quick round of the carnival, talking with those who’d drawn the night watch, checking everything was in working order, ready for the off. In the silence, Caleb would wash and dress. Of course he’d not had the time to bring many amenities with him on his sudden flight from the city but several small merchants chance met on the road or operating out of their own front rooms in small farming villages had been very pleased by his custom as they’d travelled along. He had himself a fine few sets of travelling clothes now, soft trousers fit for working in, loose shirts and simple jackets for colder weather. Nothing like the restricting uniform he’d been used to wearing. In this, Caleb could run, he could kneel, he could stretch and move. 

Once ready, he’d start preparing breakfast. He felt it was the least he could do, seeing as Mollymauk had given him so much, and the arm length lists of chores he’d always been required to do back in Rexxantrum had given him the necessary skills. After Mollymauk returned, usually splattered in mud from helping shove a caravan out of a too deep rut in the road or with his hair full of twigs after chasing down an escaped tarpaulin snatched by the wind, they’d sit together on the bed and eat. Molly would be effusive with his praise, kissing Caleb’s forehead and joking that he knew there was a reason this one night stand had turned into thirty nights, that he’d never eaten half so well. 

The rest of the day would be full of travelling. Caleb liked this time best of all, sitting on top of the caravan or inside, watching from the window, if one of the sudden rain storms that apparently came on with no warning in this part of the country was moving in. Molly had quickly realised that the part of Caleb’s brain that had been completely devoted to study and combing through old books on magic, many of them in entirely different languages with nearly unreadable, ancient pages was very well suited to deciphering maps and navigating a safe route, as they passed out of the Empire and the roads grew less clear and less maintained. So he’d sit at the small table with a cup of steaming tea, Frumpkin pawing at his compass and sextant and any stray curling edge of a page, and see them safely to wherever Molly decided to go next. 

Slowly, surely, they eased themselves free of the grip of the Empire, not stopping for far longer than they ever had before, wanting to avoid any word of them getting back to Rexxantrum. If the rest of the circus wondered why they were passing up so many opportunities to put on their show, so many holdfasts and towns and villages that were usually on their schedule, they didn’t say anything. When Caleb sat there and watched the faint pencil line that marked their path grow longer and longer, stretching off into other maps, other futures, it would get easier to breathe. 

The evenings would be given over to finding a good spot to spend the night, a field or a sheltered grove if it was raining. Then the cook fires would spring to life throughout the camp like bright flowers, the groups that gathered around them shifting from night to night depending on what was on offer, who had booze, who had brought their instrument out with them and had it laid temptingly across their lap. Caleb found himself following Molly like a lost puppy on these nights, though he always insisted he was free to go wherever he wanted. It was just easier to sit close to him whatever fire they decided to eat at that night, letting him lead conversations, only mumbling short answers to the questions he was asked directly, alongside thank you’s for the food pressed upon him. 

Not that the rest of the carnival weren’t good people, they obviously were and the conversation was always bright and sparkling, full of life as only people who’d dedicated their lives to entertaining others could be. Caleb was just content to stay on the fringes of it all, audience rather than participant, at least until he’d fully decided quite who he was going to be now. 

But then the fires would turn to embers, the pots would be taken in and cleaned by whoever hadn’t helped cook the meal, the musicians would grow tired and play their last few requests. And Molly’s eyes would find Caleb’s and his hand would creep across the ground for their fingers to entwine. A part of Caleb would get its own little rapid heartbeat and instincts he was only just developing would prickle. Molly would grin at that and pull him to his feet, leading him back to the caravan, the good natured laughter of their friends fading behind them. 

Moly wouldn’t bother to light the lanterns in his caravan. They wouldn’t bother to put their clothes away as they were abandoned on the floor. The bed would always be there to catch them when they inevitably tumbled back, too lost in their kissing to see where they placed their feet. 

And every night would pass by much the same as the others did, with moans and gasps and tongues scraping. Caleb could never see himself tiring of it. 

Until one morning when instead of a load of maps and his usual compass, there was a pile of unfamiliar papers waiting to greet him on the kitchen table. 

“What’s this?” he wondered aloud, taking the edge of the stack and thumbing through it, listening to the thump and crack of it. 

“This is your job for the foreseeable future.”

Caleb hadn’t even realised Molly was sitting behind him on the bed and the shock nearly sent the cup of Caduceus’ finest green cherry blend crashing to the floor. 

“Sorry, sorry!” the tiefling laughed, jumping up and steadying his shoulders. 

“You can’t keep doing that to me,” Caleb huffed, setting the mug down, “Wear a bell or something…”

“Oh sweetling, if you want to see me in a collar, all you have to do is ask,” Molly chucked, stretching his legs out to nudge Caleb’s teasingly. 

The blush that erupted on his freckled face was more of a glow than a full conflagration, it was hard to maintain any prudishness after spending nearly a month as Molly’s lover. And he didn’t doubt the truth of his words; the purple velvet lined oak chest under the bed that held a frankly incredible array of sex toys undoubtedly held a few collars. That box had led to a number of very interesting nights for the two of them. 

“What do you mean this is my job?” Caleb said quickly before his thoughts could stray any further and force him to write the rest of the afternoon off completely for the both of them.

Molly stood and stretched like a lounging cat, “This is our show script. It’s still got all of Gilmore’s notes in it where he used to put his little touches but you’re more than welcome to put your own spin on it.” 

“Oh…” something in Caleb’s chest grew taut. 

“So I thought we could go through it together and see where you come in so you can get all your cues down,” the tiefling continued, not noticing the tension in Caleb’s shoulders, coming over and patting the sheaf of papers, “Outside of course. I tell you, once I was having a pretty solid night in here with this warlock fellow from up Hupperdook way, cute guy, nice ass and he was showing me his little tricks and he set my damn curtains on fire. Last time I mix magic and confined spaces, you can still see the scorch marks…” 

Caleb tried to laugh the way he usually did at Molly’s stories but there was a hard to ignore prickling in his fingertips, like the blood wasn’t getting to them. 

“Okay, so, outside?” the words burst from him with a false brightness as he seized the papers and made for the door, “Let’s do it.”

Molly paused, looking surprised but he smiled and nodded, following him towards the door. 

Just do it. Just get through it. 

They found themselves a little sheltered space in a nearby grove of trees. Molly settled himself on a rock, folding his legs underneath him, the sun coming in behind him and dappling him in soft pools of golden light. He looked almost fae and, despite the uncomfortably hot anxiety bubbling inside him, Caleb couldn’t help pausing to cup his face and kiss him then and there. 

Molly giggled brightly against his lips, returning the kiss for a few long seconds before pulling back, “Okay, big guy, we’re on the clock. Work for an hour or so then I’ll see if we can find the little brook nearby and go skinny dipping, huh?”

The thought was enough for Caleb to forget that anything had even been wrong. He let Molly have the script and stood a little ways away in the middle of the grove, trying to relax, searching for the space inside him that made his magic possible. The calmness, the levelness, the sensation that he had a place in the universe. 

“Okay,” Molly’s voice found his ears, “So the curtain lift, that all works on a permanent enchantment in the cloth itself so no problems there…so your first cue is when I say ‘that’s exactly what we do’, that’s when I need the dancing lights…”

Calen nodded. Dancing lights. An almost painfully simple evocation cantrip. He could do that in his sleep. 

But the grass under his bare feet kept shifting into concrete. The trees around him turned to high, cavernous stone walls in the corner of his eye. The warm air, redolent with pine and bark, became cold and dead in his throat. 

_ Are you just going to stand there, boy? _

He tried to say the incantation but they caught in his throat. 

“Caleb?” Molly sounded confused and his nerves jangled in response. He couldn’t mess this up, he couldn’t…

“I’m sorry!” he choked out, “I…I can do it, I just…it’s been a while…” 

Caleb held his palms out, searching for a focus. But now the words themselves had fled, after they’d been fixed in his mind just a second before. He knew it, he had to know it, this was the most basic stuff…

_ Useless. Clumsy. Sloppy.  _

“Caleb, hold on…”

“No!” he cried, terror hitting him over the back of the head as he heard his own voice crack, “I can do it, I swear!” 

_ You are nothing, boy.  _

_ You are disobedient. Disloyal. Ungrateful. A waste of magical potential.  _

_ A true wizard would not flinch from his punishment. Stand there and take it like a man. Do that much at least or I’ll turn you out onto the streets. Where I should have left you. _

What erupted from his mouth and his palms half a heartbeat later was not dancing lights. Fire filled the space between him and Mollymauk, a sudden, sharp roar of not anger, not power but fear, lashing out at the imagined threat, at the memory of hundreds of strikes, punches, kicks, nights without food or water. 

Fortunately, the blaze spouted upwards, up above the treeline. Left hollow by the sudden rush of energy, Caleb pitched forward, knees and palms scraping in the dirt as he began to cry, apologies gasping out between heaving sobs. 

He didn’t know who he was apologising to at first. Ikithon or Mollymauk. Himself? 

Either way he coughed and spat into the dirt, trying to get the horrible taste out of his mouth, rusty and burnt, the taste of misfired magic. He couldn’t do a simple spell. He’d come so close to hurting Mollymauk, seriously hurting him. 

A new life had been so close within his reach that his fingertips had brushed it, he’d started to get his mouth around the word happiness. And he’d ruined it. In a single gout of flame and the inability to perform even the simplest, most basic spell, he’d ruined everything. 

“Caleb? Are you okay to be touched right now?”

Caleb’s head snapped up. Mollymauk was bent over him, now entirely framed in the sunlight, so much so that there was barely anything to him but a silhouette. 

He hadn’t run. 

Swallowing hard, he nodded and two strong hands came to rest on his own, helping him to his feet. 

“Come on now, there we are…there we go…”

The forest clearing came into focus now he was upright though he also became aware of the painful scrapes on his palms and the rawness of his throat, “I…I don’t understand…” 

“Well, I’m no expert…” Molly brushed some ash from Caleb’s shirt, “And I really do think you should see an expert, if we ever come across one? But I think you’ve got some trauma surrounding magic from that Ikithon asshole and-“

“No, I…I know  _ that,”  _ Caleb shook his head, managing to find some odd scrap of humour in amongst all this, “I nearly burnt down half a fucking forest, of course I have trauma.”

And then, simple as that, the two of them were laughing. Laughing so hard they couldn’t be sure who was supporting who as they barely kept from tumbling down into the dirt. It was an odd kind of laughter, slightly manic, slightly unhinged. But it burnt away that taste in Caleb’s mouth and the shaking in his hands and knees and left him empty. 

Caleb felt a little giddy with the shock of survival. He was still standing. 

“What I meant…what I meant was,” he gasped, still catching his breath, “I don’t understand how you’re still here. How…how you’re not scared…”

He didn’t want to jinx it, make Mollymauk suddenly jolt to his senses and realise he was stood perilously close to a man who’d nearly roasted him alive, but it needed to be said. 

“I am a little scared but it’s more scared for you than of you,” Molly said after a little thought, still fussing idly with the clinging foliage on his shirt, “I don’t like knowing you’ve got all these bad thoughts inside you all the time. I don’t like that I can’t help.”

“You do help,” Caleb murmured softly, “You…you actually try. You have no idea how much that means to me, Molly. To see someone actually try.” 

Molly seemed to process that for a few moments more before smiling gently, a little sadly, and pressing a kiss to Caleb’s forehead. 

“Come on, we’re done with work. Just…hold the idea of doing magic in the back of your mind, doing it for yourself, not for Ikithon, not even really for me. For yourself. And hopefully it’ll just settle there and we’ll find our way to it. Sound good?”

Caleb’s heart thumped hard in his chest, “And if I never get there?”

“Well…then I’ll stick you on the cotton candy cart,” Mollymauk winked, elbowing him gently, “Now let’s go find that brook.”

 

Caleb toyed with that idea as he shed his clothes by the edge of the brook that was really more of a hot spring, gently steaming in the afternoon light. The idea of magic for himself. Magic for the fun of it. Enjoying the talents he’d been given, no matter where they’d come from. Disengaging it somehow from everything that had come before. 

Then Mollymauk was in his arms, pulling him into the water, pressing his blissfully naked body against his own and he didn’t think much of anything else for a while.

But then, much later, he was lying in the darkness, Molly using his chest as a pillow, snoring soundly and leaving his lover counting the divine aches in his body, staring up at the stars that had been enchanted to glow in the dark, cut out and stuck on the caravan ceiling in a perfect recreation of the constellations. 

It occurred to him then that the equations he’d learned, the diagrams and runes he’d so carefully studied, they didn’t belong to anyone. They just  _ were,  _ no matter whose books he’d originally read them in, no matter who’d inked them onto the paper. Truths that were simply true, no matter what they were used for. 

They didn’t belong to Ikithon. So he couldn’t take them away from away from Caleb, police when he could and couldn’t use them. 

They didn’t belong to anyone. So they could belong to everyone. 

Caleb reached up, doing his best not to jostle Mollymauk. He put his palm out towards the softly glowing paper stars and sank into the state of mind, felt energy pulse inside him and spread out through his veins, branching right down into his capillaries. 

The stars began to fade as a new source of light took root in his palm, nothing too bright, just a single orb of the softest, gentlest milky white light. It budded, swelled and broke free, hanging over the bed, the moon to the stars behind it. 

And Caleb smiled. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb's first show at the Fletching and Moondrop Circus 
> 
> -
> 
> Sorry this is such a short chapter, I wanted to get something out so you all know I haven't abandoned this fic. Life's just been getting busy!

Under the rows and rows of raised seating, in the shadows, it was surprisingly cold.

Caleb was grateful for that, out there under the bright lanterns and in amongst the press of their newest audience, it was stifling. How Molly could bear it, with the hat and the massive swirling coat he wore, he’d never understand.

But he was letting his thoughts stray too much. He had to be listening, he had to be ready. He had his own part to play in this and he refused to do it poorly.

Thirty seconds until Molly’s introduction. Enough time to tie his hair back and roll his sleeves up to the elbow. Enough time to centre himself, settle onto the balls of his feet, loose and ready.

It felt good. It felt right. The whole show was its own beautiful piece of music, orchestrated and free flowing, made up of so many individual melodies woven together. And Caleb had his own part, his own small piece. He was fiercely proud of it, even in amongst the nerves. They weren’t enough to reach up and strangle him, like vines in his own throat, stealing his words. Instead it was a bearable crackling in the tips of his fingers, excitement and anticipation and jumpiness all in one not exactly comfortable but stimulating sensation.

He didn’t feel like a scared child. He felt like a performer.

So it was with a small, proud smile on his lips that he whispered Mollymauk’s words along with him, as they boomed out, magically amplified, through the tent.

_My, my, my. What a wonderful crowd we’ve got here tonight. We’ll have to work extra hard to put on a show deserving of all you lovely folk. But then again…_

Twenty six seconds. A gasp erupted from the crowd above his head as Mollymauk stepped into the open air. Caleb had made him explain the many weights and pulleys that held the trapeze ropes and made the stunt possible, to assure him it was safe.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

He let the magic surge out of his palms. It was invisible but it felt like he could almost see it, like a wave disturbing the sawdust on the floor, rippling out, one stone thrown into a still lake that set everything in motion.

A rush of fabric. A delighted gasp from the audience. And light suddenly poured through the forest of legs, stripes of it falling across Caleb’s triumphant smile as nearly fifty dancing lights sprung into life, all different colours.

_That’s exactly what we do._

 

Before his first show, Caleb had been informed of the most important, sacred, almost holy tradition the circus had. The fact that, after their first show at any stop, there was an absolute rager of a party held afterwards.

Caleb could hear the noise of it already in full swing, the pulsing of music, the crash of tankards against each other, the babble of many voices. He’d promised Jester and Beau he’d be out there in a little while but for now he just wanted a moment of quiet, a moment to feel proud of himself.

The empty tent was a strangely beautiful thing. It was almost like a cathedral or a temple in its quiet sense of power, its air of promise. The ceiling was so high it disappeared into shadows up above him, the stray pieces of confetti and odd bits of popcorn had been cleared away until there was just the quiet, the scent of sugar and gunpowder, the remembered tunes haunting the space until the next show. And him, in the middle of it all.

“Didn’t fancy the party, darling?”

Caleb turned, smiling. He’d been expecting Molly to come find him before too long. The tielfing had been incredibly attentive of him in the run up to his first show, ever since the day in the woods. Even as he’d seen Caleb’s confidence growing, his impressive command of magic slowly returning, Molly had stayed protective of him, always reminding him that he didn’t have to push himself, that he could take things as slow as he needed. Five times he’d reminded him, in amongst the manic rush of the circus getting ready for opening night, that he could pull out if he wanted to.

Every time, if he hadn’t been wildly busy, Caleb could have leapt into his arms and kissed him.

“I’ll be along in just a little bit,” he replied, standing in the dead centre of the stage, watching as Molly danced effortlessly down the row of seats as if they were steps, “I was just…decompressing, I guess.”

“I like to do that after shows too,” Molly smiled fondly, reaching the bottom and immediately running to Caleb to hug him tightly, “And you were _incredible,_ darling, have I mentioned that?”

“A few times,” Caleb laughed, “Though I’m still not tired of hearing it.”

“Well, you were, you were amazing, you were wonderful, you were spectacular,” a kiss to the forehead accompanied each superlative, until the wizard was red in the face and giggling helplessly.

“You were brilliant too, you know,” he finally managed to get a returning compliment in.

And it was true. Mollymauk had been his usual effervescent self, playing host to the magic of the night with all the jokes, smiles and grace Caleb had seen in rehearsal but dialled up to the extreme. The song he’d sung to close the show had been enough to ensure Caleb had moved through his cues for the bows with tear tracks on his cheeks.

Though he looked even more beautiful now, with his make-up wiped away and costume hung up for the next night, just in his patterned leggings and open shirt, sweating and exhausted and satisfied with yet another performance. Exactly how he’d looked when he’d approached Caleb after that first show, the night he’d rescued him.

The night he’d saved his life.

Molly had squeezed his hand one last time and was now moving around the ring, touching the trapeze ropes that had been lowered and tied away, checking the supports of each one.

“This was my job before I was made ringmaster, you know,” he said in a light conversational tone that was a little too practised, winding one length around his wrist, “I was the trapeze artist.”

“Really?” Caleb tilted his head admiringly, “I can imagine you being great at that.” He’d always thought Molly moved like he was meant for something more than mere walking.

“I miss it like crazy sometimes, I never get the chance to practise any more apart from that one time at the start of the show…”

The soft longing in his voice and the way he was drifting towards the bowl of powdered chalk like he was orbiting it made what he did next inevitable though Caleb decided to play along.

“Show me?”

Molly gave him a delighted grin, sinking his hands into the powder and clapping them together, sending a burst of it into the empty air where it turned golden in the sunset light streaming through from above. He knotted his hand in the rope, kicked his boots away and made another hold for his  bare foot before shifting his weight ever so slightly to bring the rope off the hook. And with a rush, fast as a striking snake, he rose.

Caleb had to stifle a shout of fear and dismay, eyes darting frantically to follow the violet blur but he moved too quickly, too erratically, he couldn’t track what was going to catch him…

Until the quick moving smudge of colour resolved itself into Mollymauk once again, casually, almost lazily swinging back and forth from one of the overhead swings. He laughed delightedly, with all the carefree joy of a playing child, the sound echoing and bouncing in strange ways. Caleb found a smile, though his heart was still in his throat, the dull buzz of a Feather Fall spell tickling his palms.

Molly shifted into a new form at the apex of each swooping arc, incredible strength in his arms allowing him to swing by one hand, then flip up to sit on the bar as if it were a summer’s day and he was swinging over a little brook rather than at a dizzying height. His delight was so obvious, Caleb’s heart ached. Then he leapt again, out into thin air without a flicker of fear, catching a free hanging rope that swung him in one wide, smooth circle around the ring while he stayed perfectly still, his form precise. Those red eyes, that dazzling smile, found Caleb as he moved, making him a fixed point as the whole world rushed past, as if the two of them were careening through the air together.

Next was another swing at the bar, a flip in the air to catch another and take him further, never losing momentum, certain and sure that he’d never fall. His impromptu aerial display ended with him in the large hoop right in the centre of the tent, upside down, rotating as the rope released and he drifted down slower, slower, slower…until he was just a few feet above where Cale stood, smiling brightly.

Caleb reached a hand upwards, as if there were any hope of touching him. Molly did the same. And for a moment, the distance between them was nothing.

“Come down here and kiss me,” Caleb murmured, voice barely more than a hush but it was enough in the silence of the tent. And it was more than enough to bring Mollymauk into his arms. That, and the release of another ballast.

He could see sweat shining on the tiefling’s forehead now they were nearly nose to nose, feel how his chest was thumping in and out like a bellows, the only proof that the display wasn’t as effortless as it had seemed from below. Caleb didn’t care, he poured every ounce of awe and delight and enchantment he’d felt watching Mollymauk into that kiss. Judging by the way his face was a darker purple than usual and his eyes were wide and wanting, the message was well received.

“What are the chances of anyone coming back in here for the next twenty minutes or so?” Caleb breathed against Molly’s lips, eyes dark and pupils wide, holding the sunset in their depths.

“Not high enough that I give a damn,” Molly returned hungrily, hands already at his shirt buttons, tearing a few off entirely in his haste.

Sawdust wasn’t the finest bed to lie on and he’d be brushing it out of his hair and off his skin for days afterwards but Caleb was far from caring because Mollymauk was on top of him, his hands were cupping his face as they kissed, his tail was wound around his leg tight as a ship’s anchor.

Fortunately, no one had business in the tent for the next half hour or so and the music was more than enough to drown out the noise.

Molly and Caleb joined the party outside without any fuss or awkward questions. Caleb settled happily by the already roaring bonfire while Molly slipped off to procure some cups of Grog’s homebrewed ale. He’d been there less than a heartbeat before Jester waved at him across the fire, Caduceus called out his own hello from where he was tending a teapot handing over the flames, Yasha nodded and smiled in his direction, Beau yelled from her lap that it took him long enough and Fjord was pressing a mug of cider on him.

The feeling of being an audience member was long, long gone. Caleb was in the heart of it, warm and smiling and happy. He had his part to play, his small song to add to the chorus of it all. He was wanted. He was cared for.

It would be much like this for the weeks to come. The same script over and over again, similar days rolling past one after the other until it all became soft and familiar and comfortable. Until Caleb could forget that he’d ever worn another name, that he’d ever known anything other than his circus family.

But even as they moved further south, even as the days grew warmer and the summer covered them all like a blanket, there were black clouds gathering, unseen in the skies ahead.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The circus finds itself in an unassuming little village on the outskirts of the empire that holds the secrets to Caleb's past

Even as he ventured further into the wide world, into towns and cities he’d only ever read about in letters and books, Caleb realised that people really were mostly the same wherever you went. 

They showed the same measured apprehension whenever the troupe would roll into view over the nearest hill, tucking their children behind wary arms and pushing their purses deeper into their pockets. Their suspicion quickly dissolved into excitement when they saw the name proudly painted on the lead wagons, if the carnival had passed this way before, and if not, when Molly placed their writ of performance somewhere nice and obvious by their camp. Whatever convinced them that these were legitimate performers, working under the respectable name of the Baron de Rolo, and not a gaggle of the wandering criminals who distracted more gullible townsfolk than could be found in these parts with flashes and bangs while their cutpurses did their work. 

Caleb knew Molly sucked his teeth and lashed his tail at that initial assumption, wondering bitterly if any of the people cared to wonder what had driven such supposed criminals into those desperate situations. Not that he’d pried too much, but Caleb saw the thin scars that littered his lover’s skin like fallen snow and wondered privately if they’d been earned under similar desperate situations. Maybe he’d ask one time. Maybe he would. 

Either way, the audience seats would be full of people with the same air of anticipation. They would gasp and laugh and applaud at the exact same moment in the script. They would weep at Mollymauk’s song, finding something in their own lives to help them connect with the longing and desire that flavoured his words and made them sting so much.

And they would leave with the same satisfaction on their faces, the same lightness of people who’d been allowed to forget their cares for an evening, forget how the harvest was coming on and the stalks weren’t as high as they could be and how the roads were getting dangerous and whether the next round of taxes would prove crippling or simply damaging. 

Caleb took a lot of comfort from that. Wherever you went, people were the same. 

They all loved stories. 

 

The summer was as long and golden as anyone could ever wish, though there was still that regretful pang when the evenings started to gather in quicker and the sun began to lose some of its heat. As the troupe rolled through the countryside, they passed more fields that were shorn right down, only broken, bristly stalks and empty husks left behind. 

There was some sadness to it, for certain, but it was a relief as well. Harvest time meant festivals and festivals meant plenty of people looking for a troupe to sing, dance, act out the traditional plays and provide a colourful, sequin backdrop for them to celebrate the season against. Molly anticipated a string of very busy, very profitable weeks, finishing up in Port Damali just in time for the city’s grand Summer’s End Celebration, a time that Molly spoke of as debauched, delightful and hilarious in fond, nostalgic tones, describing it as the perfect place to earn an awful lot of gold and blow it all on incredibly fun activities in less than a night. 

But before all that came a string of smaller, far more modest villages in the borders, with their own celebrations to facilitate. Not the whole tent and fireworks and noise business for these folk, just a simple stage in the middle of town and a selection of good, honest, ribald plays with the odd flash and bang here or there. Simple stories with a clear moral and hidden dirty jokes and songs to sing along with, something a professional troupe such as Molly’s could really sink their teeth into and make into something special. Perhaps a party afterwards to welcome the autumn with a large bonfire and more music, which the humble performers would of course be delighted to provide. 

Caleb couldn’t help but think he liked these events more than he’d like Port Damali. These were sweet and provincial and familiar in a way that tugged at a place deep inside of him. The decorations were all made of home grown flowers, the cider was from farms less than a stone’s throw away, rich and earthy as anything Caleb had ever drank. The plays poked fun at lords and law masters, the songs were simple and silly and full of innuendos that made him laugh, made to be clapped along to and danced to in fields lit by lanterns and the rich light of a late summer moon. 

A few times, he and Molly had found themselves in the midst of one of those dances, twirling around each other, forgetting everything else around them aside from each other’s faces, everything holding its breath for the sweet kiss when the music hit its last note. 

Those weeks would have been near perfect for Caleb, if it weren’t for the nightmares. 

 

They came without fail every single night, made worse by just how different they were from the warm, happy days, how Caleb would forget about them until he closed his eyes and another one found him. They were insidious, implacable, formless. All he could remember when he woke up was a terrible brightness that hurt his eyes, screams that he couldn’t place as even human and a terrible, gnawing sense of being utterly and totally alone. 

But then of course there would always be Molly, sleeping beside him, not minding if Caleb needed to jostle or nudge him as he moved into his arms and hid from the lingering fingers of the nightmares. How could be believe he was alone, when he had the tiefling’s warmth surrounding him, his chest rising and falling against his own? And before long, once the glow of the sunrise bled underneath the curtains, the shadowy shapes and the screams would be forgotten. 

Until the next night. 

 

The next village to be graced by the Fletching and Moondrop Carnival was a lot smaller than the others, and even they’d been nothing to shout about. The whole place could probably be walked across from end to end in less than ten minutes. A simple markerstone named it Blumenthal.

Stranger than that, the fields were still full of wheat, browning in the morning sun. Caleb watched it from his perch on the top of his and Molly’s caravan and noted that they’d have to start bringing it in soon or it would start to wilt into uselessness. 

Then he wondered how he knew that. 

Once the wagons parked up a respectable distance away, Molly put on his top hat and marched off to the townhouse so he could announce their arrival and show off their writ, given that they hadn’t been here before. Such a thing might be necessary, if these were a nervous sort of folk. 

But as Caleb hopped down from the caravan and wandered into the little square, he noticed the people looked a lot more busy than suspicious, anxious eyed women and puffing elderly men going this way and that, carrying rusty looking scythes and bundles of twine, calling to one another in stressed, thin voices. And no wonder, with their food and income for the winter turning brown in the fields around them. The harried panic practically gave their air a taste.

Caleb was lost in his own thoughts when one of the women collided with him, clearly he’d meandered right into her path. 

“Gods above, I’m so sorry,” he said quickly, diving down and gathering up the shears she’d dropped, “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“It’s alright,” she replied, looking a little dazed, clearly just eager to get on with her task, “No harm done.” There was clearly some elf blood in her family, if her pointed ears and bright eyes were anything to go by. 

“If you don’t mind my asking, is everything alright?” Caleb blurted out, as if showing concern would make up for nearly knocking her down in his obliviousness.   
The woman sighed, forehead wrinkling with more worry than she really looked old enough to bear, “Harvest time and we’re short handed. Most people with the strength to swing a scythe are off in the cities, taking the crown’s coin. All well and good for them but who does that leave to bring the crop in? Old folks who should be enjoying a quiet life, mothers with children too young to be out there in the heat all day…” She sucked in a breath, as if she’d said more than she’d meant to, at least to a stranger with an odd accent and an inability to look where he was going. 

“Well, we’ve got plenty of able hands,” Caleb blinked, waving his hand in the direction of the wagon train, “We’d be happy to help out.” 

The woman narrowed her eyes, as if such a generous offer was a cause for concern, “You aren’t from around here. We have little enough to offer as payment, why would you help?”

Caleb didn’t have an answer for her, he could only stand there and open and close his mouth like a fish out of water. “I guess...it's just the right thing to do, isn’t it?”  
The woman eyed him like a lifeline she desperately wanted to believe was real but common sense told her to be wary of grasping, “Most folk wouldn’t see that as a good enough reason these days.”

Caleb set his jaw, realising the truth of her words and not liking it.

“Not folk like us, ma’am.”

 

He wasn’t exactly sure how it happened but somehow, when Molly returned from the townhouse, he found his shy, bookish wizard stood on top of an upturned costume chest, the whole carnival troupe gathered around him with a singular bemused expression, listening as he broke them up into teams, gave them tasks and equipment and sent them out into the fields. In less than five minutes, everyone had a job to do and the right kit to do it with, whether that be magic, a borrowed piece of rusty farm equipment or a re-purposed piece of kit from the carnival. In less than five minutes, total order out of complete chaos. 

Trying not to look as shocked as he felt to see Caleb speaking authoritatively in front of a crowd, Molly cleared his throat and put a boot on the edge of the chest, “Darling, where are my troupe, who have a show to put on tonight, off to?”

The spell broken in an instant, Caleb jumped guiltily and flushed crimson as he faced Mollymauk.

“I...I’m sorry, they were just saying how they don’t have enough people to bring in the harvest and it’s all going to be lost if they don’t do it soon and I-I just thought if we help they can get it done and we can put our show on...later...maybe?” he twisted his fingers together anxiously, “I should have asked, I’m sorry…”

Molly shushed him gently and put a hand on his arm, soothing his babbling, “I got a similar story from the mayor. This was a good idea you had, Caleb, we can do more for them like this. And they’ll probably let us put a little something on after the day’s work.”

Relief flooded his wizard’s face and his shoulders relaxed, “Oh. Thank you, Molly.”

The tiefling chuckled and kissed his cheek lightly, “Leave every place better than when we found it. That’s the rule, right?”

The kiss made Caleb blush and grin, winding their fingers together comfortably, “True. Grab a pitchfork then, we need to do our part. Can’t have the ringmaster sitting back and letting his troupe do all the work.”

Molly groaned theatrically but he let Caleb lead him out towards the fields, where people in colourful costumes and humble roughspun alike were already hard at work.

“How do you know all this stuff anyhow?” he asked, still holding Caleb’s hand, tone light and joking, “You’re practically an expert and there sure aren’t any fields back in Rexxantrum. Did you read a book about it one day or something?”

For a moment, a troubled look crossed Caleb’s face, one that Molly couldn’t fail to notice and knocked him a little bit, as sudden and deep as it was.   
“I don’t really know…”

 

By the time the sun was almost half gone beyond the horizon, the work was done. The air was heavy with the scent of fresh grass and turned earth, nearly everyone had dirt under their fingernails and tingling in their palms, along with the sense of complete satisfaction that came with a well done job. As Mollymauk predicted, the townspeople were more than happy for the troupers to provide a little entertainment, throwing open the doors of Blumenthal’s only tavern and refusing payment from anyone wearing the colours of Whitestone. 

Everyone in the carnival who played an instrument fetched it and tuned it, the lot of them somehow making their patchwork assortment of guitars, flutes, drums and strings from all corners of the world sound like they had always meant to sing in harmony. Jester and Nott brought out their puppets, making them dance and cavort across the bar in an impromptu show. 

Though the ringmaster himself was rather late to it all. He turned up a little after sunset, apparently coming from the direction of the barn, flecks of hay stuck in his rumpled hair and face pleasantly flushed, hand in hand with their equally disheveled arcanist who winced when he finally took his seat at one of the tables, much to the amusement of his companion, who was the only one who noticed. 

Merriment, music and a less than sensible amount of alcohol seemed to be the only things that were on the table for the rest of the night. Caleb wanted to enjoy it, the way he’d been able to do ever since he found his family amongst the members of the carnival. But now the comfortable, repetitive work of the day was finished, a sense of disquiet was chewing away at his chest, the same one that had sent the cloud across his face when Mollymauk had asked how he seemed to know so much about farming, about life in a small village. He tried to chase it off with drinking, laughing a little too loudly at Jester and Nott, dancing with every one of his friends who asked him. And they’d work, for a time, but as soon as he returned to his seat it would be there again, that sensation of a foot put wrong, like assuming there would be another step at the bottom of a flight of stairs but finding yourself swaying in mid air, lurching forward with no support. His hands in front of him didn’t feel quite real, even as he deliberately sent them through the motions for each and every spell he knew, something that had always helped him keep calm in the past. When he spoke, his own voice struck his ears as wrong somehow, echoing like it was coming from far away. 

He wanted to run. He just couldn’t work out why. 

“There’s always one,” Molly grunted, dropping into the seat across from him.

“One what?” Caleb looked up, grateful for the distraction.

Molly flicked his tail in the direction of the furthest corner of the taproom. Hunched into it like he was trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the troupers, was an old man, clearly older than most others. He bent over his tankard of dark ale, eyes heavy lidded but gleaming with suspicion and disgust, clearly aimed in their direction. Caleb felt a twist in his stomach just looking at him, like he’d committed some awful crime. 

“No matter what we do for them,” Molly rapped his fingernails on the table top, a sure sign he was agitated, “No matter how much we try, some people will always look down on us.”

Caleb moved to take his hand, offer him some comfort, maybe suggest another quite literal roll in the hay to distract him but he realised something. The man wasn’t looking at the carnival as a whole. He was looking at him.

Less than a second after this realisation sank into Caleb’s mind with a cold shudder, the old man muttered something, the tail end of which reached them at the other end of the bar.

“...used to burn such folk, those who meddled in the dark arts...”

The atmosphere in the bar room changed in the time it took for Caleb’s heart to beat. Molly’s chair scraped back with a hard, splitting sound, effectively silencing the musicians. He drew himself up to his full height, moving between Caleb and the old man. For the first time Caleb saw how much danger could be held in the depths of those red eyes. 

“You got something to say, friend?” he demanded flatly. The full force of his theatrics training was behind his voice, making it boom resolutely through the small space, bringing everything around him to a screeching halt. All eyes turned to them, carnival eyes wary and hesitant, village eyes shocked, startled out of their celebrations. 

The man’s eyes hardened. Molly’s tail lashed harshly. 

Caleb reached out and tugged anxiously on the sleeve of the tiefling’s coat, “Molly, its okay…”

Finally the tension broke when the dwarven woman who kept the tavern cleared her throat with a note of warning and set down the tankard she’d been cleaning with a solid bang. “Gentlemen,” was all she said. 

The tension unwound like a coiled snake darting for the safety of the grass. Certain things couldn’t be argued with and one of those was a pointed remark from a barmaid. The old man rose to his feet and stalked off, Mollymauk sank back down into his chair, following Caleb’s pleading grasp. The musicians picked back up, playing louder and with an extra flair of brightness, trying to mask the sour note of unpleasantness left in the room. Not a fight in the true sense, barely even an altercation, just a few exchanged words and looks that allowed both men to keep their dignity. 

Still, Caleb was shaking.

The barmaid appeared, setting down their latest round of drinks, her face apologetic, “Pay Arlen no mind. A lot of folk round here have reason to be a little suspicious of those who are magically inclined. Meaning no offence of course, it's just...well, those who are old enough to remember.”

“What do you mean?” Molly asked, still a little defensive. His tail gave him away, it was still bucking and writhing behind him in a fit of anger. 

The barmaid cleared her throat, clearly building up for a story, “Well...a good few years back, coming up on a score or would it be more now? Anyway, we had a shifty character come through. Hood up, didn’t speak, had the smell of magic on him if you take my meaning. Took rooms at this very tavern back when my old mother ran it. Stayed a week or so then disappeared one night without paying.”

“That’s why he was threatening my workers?” Molly demanded incredulously, eyes flaring again, “Because a wizard stiffed on a bill once?”

The barmaid gave him a look, admonishing him a little, her voice getting harder, “Well, given that the very night he disappeared one of the farmhouses went up in flames out of nowhere. Killed a pair of newlyweds, nicer folk you could never hope to meet, and their little boy, only five years old. All of them, dead in one night. And the stranger was seen fleeing the blaze, cloak and all. So no, sir, it was a little more than a stiffed bar tab.”

It was as if the floor of the tavern had fallen away for no one but Caleb. Everyone else continued around him, voices and movement but it was all a blur to him. He was falling. 

“What were their names?” he made himself ask, cutting across Molly’s apologies, his voice flat and cold, “The family, what were their names?” 

The barmaid blinked, his tone startling her, as it startled everyone else around the table. Molly looked at him, mouth open a little, confused. 

“Well...it was a little before my time but I think…” she said haltingly, “Ermendrud. That was it. Leo and Una, I can’t speak to what their poor little lad was called. You can see the ruins of their farm still out there, the constabulary never sent anyone to clear it away after their so called thorough investigation…”

Caleb had stopped listening long before that but it was only then that he could force his legs to move, jolting up as if he’d been electrocuted. His chair hit the floor, his tankard hit the tiles below and cracked. And then he ran. 

He got the briefest glimpse of Mollymauk’s stricken expression, felt his fingertips brush his arm but it wasn’t nearly enough to stop him. Nothing would have been.   
He ran along the lane, everything around him lurching sickeningly like he was running on the deck of a ship, tilting on its axis, no sense of up or down, right or left. But his legs knew exactly where to go, muscles remembering movements, turns through streets his brain had buried a long time ago. He was vaguely aware of people staring, of Fjord calling his name as he passed, of Yasha reaching for him. But their faces, their voices meant nothing, not now. 

He could smell burning. 

Soon the main cluster of houses was behind him and he was out in the fields, staggering through freshly shorn stalks, what was left of them crunching and cracking like dry bones under his feet. His foot hit a rock buried somewhere in the dirt and he sprawled, skinning his palms and tearing the left knee from his trousers but he just leapt up and ploughed on. 

And then he was there. Home, something inside him whispered, and that was what broke him, what sent the tears running down his cheeks and ripped a low moan of agony from his chest. He was home. 

There was only a shadow of the foundations left, indentations in the ground. Half a left side wall was all that actually stood, stones blackened and cracked. The fire had consumed nearly all of it, the wooden door and the thatched roof, the blankets and curtains, all the furnishings, the pots and pans, the small array of possessions held dear to the Ermendrud family.

Twenty years of rain, sun and snow, along with the encroaching grass and wildflowers all around it, had healed the land, blowing away the ash, rotting the burnt timbers, covering the scars in the earth. Caleb’s mind had done something similar, healing over the memories too painful and old to remain, wearing down the sharp edges like sea glass until it was small enough to hold. Ikithon’s magic and lies had done the rest, turning it into nearly nothing. Caleb hadn’t even noticed the absence, the loose threads in his own story that hadn’t quite joined up. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to notice, in his new, happier life as Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk’s companion, arcanist for the Fletchling and Moondrop circus. 

But it was Bren who fell to his knees in front of the burned skeleton of his family’s home, sobbing so hard he was nearly sick. And Bren remembered a night so long ago if felt more like a dream. He remembered a biting fear trying to claw its way out of him, far too much to be held in such a small body. He remembered flames licking up under the door, an orange so bright they hurt his eyes. He remembered a desperate need to escape, to run, to get out. 

And then a hand had reached out to him. Not his father’s, roughened by field work, calloused but so strong and so sure. Not his mother’s, gentle, always apt to comb through his hair reassuringly.

But it was a hand. It was life. Rescue, escape. He’d seized it and felt cool, soothing air rush into his little lungs, going like frantic bellows. The relief had been so palpable, he’d never felt such relief to feel dirt under his hands. 

And then he’d heard his mother screaming. 

That was where the memory ended, where Ikithon’s memory cleansing spell took hold again. But of course it had made sure not to spare him that sound, his mother screaming. He knew he’d carry that sound in the very iron of his blood until the day he died. 

“Caleb?”

He didn’t recognise the name at first, as lost in the memory as he was, the memory where he was Bren, he’d only learned how to write it just last week, tracing it in the dirt floor of their home, Mama had been so proud of him. As proud as the stranger had seemed when he’d come upon Bren making the river stones float. Mama and Papa told him never to talk to strangers but Bren had never been able to show his tricks to anyone before and the stranger had seemed so excited, asking him what else he could do, telling him he could be a powerful wizard one day, filling Bren’s head with fantastic ideas…

“Caleb, it’s okay,” Molly’s voice shook, knowing full well that nothing was okay and might never be okay again.

“He told me he found me on the streets,” Caleb said, his voice a limp, dead thing, “He said I should be grateful he took me in. He made me thank him.”

Molly put his hands on Caleb’s shoulders, helping him to his feet. Nothing in Caleb’s body fought against it. 

“Oh, your hands,” Molly groaned, seeing the torn flesh from where the stones and sharp wheat stalks had scraped at him. This was an easier, smaller piece of it all to worry about, something far simpler to heal, and Caleb could see why he fixated on it, not knowing how to deal with everything else just yet. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Caleb croaked, some life creeping back into his voice but the only thing in it was anger, a cold and iron anger, “I’m going back to Rexxantrum and I’m going to kill him.”

Molly looked fearful, his grip on Caleb’s wrists tightening, “Love, you’re just upset right now, that’s understandable. Let’s not do anything rash right now.”

Caleb snatched his hands back, voice flaring and swallowing up whatever Molly was about to say, “How...how can you say that? He messed with my mind, he lied to me for years, he killed my family. I’m going to kill him, I’m going to burn him where he stands and he’s going to fucking deserve it.” 

The tiefling bit his lip, hands still hovering in the air where they’d been tenderly tracing Caleb’s palms, reaching for something that was no longer there, “He would deserve it, I know that, Caleb…”

“Then what the hell is the problem-”

“The problem is you sound like him,” Molly raised his voice, echoing in the empty field, stopping Caleb dead, “I...I didn’t know your parents Caleb, but is this what they’d want? Would they want you to become a killer, to just let your anger run you for the rest of your life? Get yourself hurt, maybe even get yourself killed, becoming exactly what that asshole was trying to turn you into? Or would they want you to live your life? I think the best way you can say fuck you to Ikithon is just to...be happy. Mourn your parents, mourn what he took from you and just move on. Show him that, even with everything he did, he didn’t win.”

Caleb couldn’t say anything for a long, slow moment, mouth working helplessly. But eventually he managed to whisper, “Didn’t he?”

Mollymauk’s face softened and he moved to take his hands again. Caleb let him, clinging to him even as his cuts stung painfully. 

“He didn’t win, Caleb. Look at you, look at what you’ve build since you escaped him. You’re content, you have friends, you...you have me. You have a life, your own life, and you’ve turned it into something so beautiful. I bet your parents are so, so proud of you.” 

At those words, Caleb began to sob, falling against Molly’s shoulder. But his lover was there to catch him, murmuring softly even as his own tears thickened his voice, never letting him fall. They weren’t the helpless, sick tears of before, opening the wound further. As they hit the grass below him, falling thick and fast as rainfall, Caleb felt clean. 

 

They stayed out there a long time, until night had well and truly fallen. Caleb did most of the talking, telling Mollymauk everything he remembered of his parents and his short, hard but simple life in Blumenthal. The more he spoke, the more memories came to him, the infallible memory that had served him so well when he learnt spells or studied bringing him these small gifts, glimpses of his old life. He told Molly how he would watch his papa work at harvest time, instructing other folk, his son sitting in the shade of the cottage walls and feeling proud that people listened to his papa, that he was seen as a leader. He remembered going down to the brook with his mama, sitting with his feet in the water, listening to her singing as she worked, trying to join in but getting lost in the lines, shouting the last rhyming word as loudly as he could to make up for it and making Mama giggle.

Each new memory brought a fresh wave of pain and loss but Caleb bore it. He owed his parents that much.

Leaving was hard, Caleb knowing in some deep part of him that he would never come back. But Molly held his hand the whole way down the verge, reminding him that it wouldn’t be gone forever. He had the stories now and that was the most important thing. 

That night, lying in bed and listening to the patter of rain on the roof of the wagon, the first proper rain in a good long while, Caleb searched his heart for anger and found none. A deep and profound sadness, the kind that would never really go away, but no anger. He could cope with that. 

 

As he was half asleep, caught between his mind being his own and being given over to his dreams, Caleb found himself looking at Mollymauk. The tiefling always looked young when he slept, with his face relaxed and with none of the facade or spiel he put on for his work. It was when he slept that Caleb would realise he was only as old as himself, maybe even a little younger. Molly had never given an exact age. 

Caleb couldn’t count the nights they’d spent together. He couldn’t count the things Molly had taught him, the myriad ways he’d made him feel good, in their bed and out of it. He tried to think how many people would chase someone out into a field, would hold them and let them cry and rage and sob, when ostensibly they were nothing more than a one night stand that had become extended by pure circumstance. 

Caleb tried to imagine a night sometime in the future when he didn’t share Mollymauk’s bed. When he didn’t hold his hand around the campfire, sit with his head in his lap, trade sweet words back and forth with him. He couldn’t. His mind recoiled back at the thought. Molly was as much a part of his future as his new job, his new comfort in his own mind. 

But still, whenever he tried to extrapolate the thought, take it further, imagine saying certain words, making certain promises, he felt the same helpless sense of impossibility. He just couldn’t be okay with being so vulnerable with another person, not even someone he’d shared so much with already. It was the same as imagining himself as impossibly rich, imagining himself as king of the world. He just couldn’t. It was nonsensical. 

Feeling a little ill, Caleb tried to imagine a day where Molly came and told him that he’d found another person to spend his nights with. That what they had, whatever it was called, was over. 

He pushed the thought away, like snatching his hand back from a pot that turned out to be scalding hot. Frustration bubbled up inside him and he shoved his face into his pillow, bunching his fists in the blanket. Couldn’t love Molly. Couldn’t let Molly go. Round and round in circles on the same endless track. He wanted to scream. 

After a few deep breaths, another trick that Molly had taught him to get him through times when his brain became too loud, Caleb relaxed, exhausted. He didn’t want to chase these thoughts around any more. Today had been far too much already, he didn’t need this on top of everything.

He cleared his mind of them, swatting them away like irritating bees, shuffling closer to Mollymauk and burying his face against his chest. With a sleepy murmur, the tiefling wrapped his arms around him, sighing and sinking back into his dream.

Caleb prayed it was a good one.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer turns to winter and trouble finds Caleb again

“Love, all I’m saying is hear me out…”

“Mollymauk, the answer is no.”

The tiefling groaned dramatically, flopping back, head hitting the wall with a dull thunk. Most of it was exaggerated theatrics, enough that Caleb was fighting back a smile.

“I told you, I don’t perform. I’d be terrible at it.”

Molly jerked back up, eyes wide and emphatic, “You keep saying that but how do you know if you’ve never tried it?”

Caleb put on an exaggeratedly pensive face, ticking off on his fingers, “I can barely speak coherently when it’s my own thoughts let alone anyone else’s, I hate people looking at me, I don’t like wearing clothes that aren’t mine, I get horrible stage fright, I hate being the centre of attention…”

“All of those things you just listed are the things I love about performing,” Molly huffed, leaning against Caleb’s shoulder as if the weight of him could physically push him into agreement.

“Well, we are two very different people, Liebling,” Caleb reached a hand up to start stroking his hair, digging his fingers into it.

They’d been having this argument, or at least a version of it, every day for the past week. Ever since Mollymauk had decided to save them the trouble of packing and unpacking the tent for towns simply too small to contain it comfortably and put on plays instead, using the town hall when offered or the wagon that converted into a stage when not.

Plays had always been part of the circus’ repertoire but now the summer was over and quickly turning to a butter autumn, Molly had decided to rely on them more and more, as they were more portable, a more secure bet in some places and his troupe were more than up to the task.

And some that very much were not.

“The part isn’t that big! It’s half a page at most,” Molly continued, tone wheedling, “And its perfect for you. The guy’s a humble innkeeper who seems so ordinary but then later he’s revealed to actually be one of the most powerful wizards that’s ever existed…”

“And this is perfect for me, how?” Caleb raised an eyebrow.

Molly nudged him with a shoulder, “Don’t put yourself down. You _are_ incredibly powerful.”

“Then let me make the special effects and do the magic stuff I’m good at,” Caleb returned easily, kissing the side of his head.

Molly pulled a face, “You have an annoyingly narrow view of what you’re good at.”

Caleb wasn’t sure if he was being told off or not but he could sense the care and love behind Molly’s words so he let it slide, kissing him again.

One good thing about the days getting colder were the travelling days like today, where Molly drew the curtains tight, pulled a blanket around the both of them and they could let the world roll past with less than a glace, whiling away the hours together, curled up and warm and safe.

Summer had been fun, even Caleb had to admit, the raucous, colourful days in Port Damali had been everything Molly had promised. Confetti and lanterns, music and laughter, the taste of sweet, rich wine and Mollymauk never leaving his lips. But that just wasn’t what he was built for, the handful of weeks had been more than enough. Now, with the blustering wind and bitter rain surrounding their perfect little pocket of warmth, he was content as a cat.

“Believe me,” he said, with a tone of finality, “Your play is better without me in it.”

“Nothing is better without you,” Molly said softly, after the barest pause, his hands finding those fingers of Caleb’s that weren’t busy combing through his own curls.

Caleb hesitated, just a little. Not because the words were unkind but because they sounded more like the start of a sentence, a hanging thread made to be followed. But Molly didn’t follow it. He just cleared his throat and turned back to the script book he’d set hopefully in Caleb’s lap that morning.

For a few seconds, his fingers flitted idly with the page ends, lifting them and letting them fall before sighing, “It’s not a day for working, anyway. Want to try that thing we saw those two exotic dancers do back at the Port?”

Caleb felt his face go red, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

 

There was finally a break in the rain and Molly had called a halt of the caravans so they could all stretch their legs and get a little air. Caleb tugged his trousers back on from where they’d ended up (strewn on the overhead lamp, somehow) and ventured out into a deliciously fresh day. 

Everything was green and jewelled with fallen raindrops, sparkling in the sun which too had come out to stretch and sigh and breathe the air. Puddles like miniature lakes filled potholes in the road and Frumpkin’s ears twitched interestedly as a dappled brown frog went hopping past the caravan steps to wallow in one. 

“Don’t you hurt it,” Caleb warned sternly, as his cat slid from around his shoulders where he usually perched like an extravagant stole and plopped down to the ground. 

If a cat, or rather a powerful fae being in the body of a cat, could look exasperated, Frumpkin did so, twitching his tail. But Caleb knew he’d listen. 

He left Frumpkin to poke excitedly at a very disinterested frog, continuing on through the stalled procession. His friends waved and called out to him as he went by, most to comment on the weather or the state of the road, Jester to comment almost proudly on the hickey the size of a plum blossoming on his chest. Caleb jumped a little, laced up the front of his shirt tighter and thanked her quickly. 

At the very edge of the caravan, where the road met the edge of the forest, he found Caduceus, instantly recognisable from quite a way off. Even sat as he was on the very lip of the road, seeming not to mind the black, wet earth clinging to his trousers, the firbolg almost as tall as Caleb and his tail swept lazily behind him. A gentle, swaying metronome rather than the twisting snake of Molly’s that seemed to have a mind of its own. 

“Hullo, Mr Clay,” Caleb said conversationally as he paused by his side. Caduceus had never been anything but sweet, reassuring and kind with him and he intended to return the favour. 

“Mr Caleb,” the firbolg returned easily, voice low and deep as the wind itself. His eyes were turned out to the forest beyond them, a longing in them that was almost painful to look at. After a moment of quiet, or really the only quiet that could be found in little pockets of near wilderness like this which is to say a quiet full of chirping birds, slow dripping of water, and swaying leaves, he murmured, “It smells of home.”

“I suppose it does,” Caleb replied after a moment, though he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. 

They’d turned the edge of the circus’ travelling route, kissing the Menagerie Coast goodbye before pivoting and making a slow, winding course in the other direction. They were still so far from anything Caleb had ever known in his younger days but still, in his quieter moments, he’d found himself constantly aware, in an itchy kind of way, that every turn of the wheel now brought them closer to the Empire rather than further away. Closer to Rexxantrum. Closer to Ikithon. 

Part of him wanted that. It would be a lie to say otherwise. The anger he’d found in Blumenthal still burned in the very pit of his stomach, like coals that refused to go out. Most days he could ignore it, days where Molly was nearly always beside him or he had a show to prepare for or maps to search through. But it was always there, the desire to see terror in Ikithon’s eyes, the way he’d always seen his own terror reflected. The need to break and tear and scream, part of him that still felt the chafe of the heavy magical chains he’d only recently been able to throw off his own memories. The need for Ikithon to feel even a small fraction of the pain Caleb had been in for years. 

But then there was the other part of him that was so utterly and completely terrified of the shrinking miles between himself and Rexxantrum that he couldn’t move. Bren knocking on the door of his mind again, with all of the constant, gnawing fear that Caleb couldn’t understand how he’d ever borne. A voice that still whispered fearfully that if he went back now, as fast as he could, begged Father’s forgiveness, blamed it all on the circus folk, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. 

In the moment, thinking on it, tears stung Caleb’s eyes and he had to blink them away quickly. He just wanted to know when he’d feel okay again. When he’d be gifted the ease with life, the simple contentment that came so naturally to everyone else around him. When he’d feel normal.

When, another part of him thought, he’d feel like someone worthy to ask Molly what else he’d meant to say that morning. And all the other times he’d felt his lover pause, hesitate, like there were more words on his tongue that he was letting go of, like birds hesitant to leave the nest. Maybe even say some things himself. 

He’d thought Caduceus was deep in his own thoughts but those almost elephantine ears twitched and he turned, just in time to see the tears before Caleb managed to get a firmer hold on himself. 

There wasn’t the slightest hesitation, the firbolg reached out and grasped Caleb’s much smaller hand in his own, squeezing comfortingly. The size difference made him feel half a child but Caleb didn’t mind that right now. 

“You were someone else back then,” he rumbled, voice almost like Frumpkin’s deepest, most contented purr, “You are so much stronger now, you can see it in your eyes. Different place, different person, y’know?”

“I don’t,” Caleb admitted, smiling weakly, “But I trust you so I guess we’ll see.”

Caduceus laughed at that, turning back to the forest, “That we will, Mr Caleb.”

 

“Where have you been?” Molly saw him coming from where he was perched on the wheels of their caravan, by the looks of things to get a good peer at the clouds overhead as if that would help him judge the weather better. 

“Just for a walk,” Caleb called, strolling up. 

An incredibly muddy Frumpkin, clearly having had a successful hour of chasing frogs, miaowed in greeting and jumped up to his shoulder, leaving a trail of muddy paw prints up Caleb’s arm. 

“Well, settle in,” Molly took off his top hat and shook raindrops off it, “Just looked ahead, the road is flooded and a tree’s fallen right across it. No way we’re getting through until it dries up and we can get it clear.”

Caleb frowned, “Strange. This is the king’s road. It should be better maintained.”

Molly shrugged, nimbly jumping down and avoiding a puddle, “If we troupers had our way the roads would always be straight as arrows, the days would be sunny and everyone would tip in silver. Such is life.”

He had to smile at that. Everything was half a poem with Mollymauk. 

“Either way, we may as well pass the time somehow.”

Caleb winced a little, “I don’t think I can stand another round, Liebling. I could barely walk as it was.”

Mollymauk smirked at that, looking more than a little proud, “Look how dirty minded you’ve become in such a short space of time. I love it. But no, what I meant was if you’re not going to be in my play you can at least help me run lines.”

Caleb blushed, though not as ferociously as he might have blushed a year ago, his cheeks barely reached the colour of his hair. He liked helping Mollymauk run lines, playing all the different characters to give him his cues, moving through the stage directions with him in an exaggerated manner, using whatever was around them as makeshift props. He would even do voices, delighting when Mollymauk would collapse in laughter. 

Performing for strangers was one thing but just making his tiefling laugh was another. Molly made a good audience. 

 

Caleb sat cross legged on the bed, cupping a mug of coffee with both hands, letting the warmth spread through him before he took a sip. They’d splashed out on a bag of the stuff in Port Dumali and though there were only a handful of beans left, every cup still reminded him of sand under his back, the prickling of skin that had been warming in the sun all day, Molly crouched over him, his lips slightly sticky with mango juice as he kissed down Caleb’s neck. 

He could sense a lifelong addiction on the horizon. 

“Right…” Molly flicked quickly through pages. He always held scripts with a kind of reverence, a respect. People quickly learned not to dog ear their scripts or throw them around carelessly when their ringmaster was around. 

But today, there seemed to be a manic energy about him. He swept through pages carelessly, nearly tearing some of them in his haste, as if his hands were occupied but his brain wasn’t. His thoughts seemed to be somewhere else entirely, worrying at something restlessly like an anxious dog. 

“Molly?” Caleb pressed gently, worry creeping into his voice, “Is everything alright?”

The tiefling looked up like he hadn’t noticed anything wrong at all, a mask of calm indifference quickly sliding into place, “Yes? Why?”

“Nothing,” Caleb shrugged after a bit of a pause. He chalked it up to his lover’s inherent dislike of having to sit and twiddle his thumbs, not being able to press on with their journey. 

Molly found his place finally, “Okay, so this is the climax of the whole thing. Classic tender admission of feelings that gives the hero the push he needs to finish off the big bad guy.”

“Right,” Caleb nodded, smiling.

In the first few weeks since he took up his position, when he mostly haunted Molly’s caravan for fear of Ikithon being behind every roadside shrub, he’d devoured the many plays and scripts and books of tales the troupe kept on hand to whip out at a moment’s notice like colourful scarves. The idea of having all the time in the world to read was too good to be believed at first. He’d read each and every one cover to cover until the tropes were clear as stage directions; the stiff morality plays, the plays where gods and goddesses meddled in the affairs of mortals and everyone came off the worse, the plays where everyone ended up dead at the end with one character left alive to deliver the closing monologue and even the incredibly raunchy plays where every other line was laden like a pack donkey with innuendo and several roles amounted to nothing but making loud sex noises from off stage which most of the troupers found hilarious and loved to be assigned. 

A few of that last breed had been brought out to play in Port Dumali as well. Caleb had missed a fair amount of his technical cues whenever Molly took one of the major roles. 

But this was definitely not one of those plays. From just that brief description of one scene, Caleb knew it instantly to be a rousing, chest thumping tale of heroics with three magic items- always three- a humble old beggar man who turned out to be a powerful mage, enough vicious monsters to fill the stage and a witty, beautiful love interest. 

There was a nice familiarity about always knowing how a play wound end, reading the traditions and tropes as easily as a road map. Even if the ending was sad, the worst kind of tragedy that would keep him very busy conjuring up gouts of fake blood, it was still nice to know what you were going to get. Caleb could see why so many poor folk would scrounge up the dregs of their rainy day money just to see their plays. It wasn’t as much about entertainment as it was about comfort. 

Another thing Caleb realised was that he didn’t know this play. The hand was unfamiliar to him and as he scanned his eyes down the character names at the side, none of them sparked any recognition. He hadn’t realised before, having refused to pick it up whenever Molly presented it to him, firm in his resolve to have no part in it that didn’t involve being well hidden from the audience’s view. 

“Is this new?” he asked, eyes flickering up to Molly. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I picked it up in the Port over midsummer. They’ve got the best writers there.” 

Caleb paused, hesitation holding him still. You’d think being a performer would make Mollymauk a peerless liar, seeing as it was his livelihood to pick up other faces and other truths but weave them into something utterly believable. But in fact, the opposite was true, at least with Caleb. 

Caleb knew what his voice sounded like when what he was saying wasn’t quite the truth, when he was acting a part. It was subtle, nearly untraceable, the difference between being in an empty room and being in a room where someone was sleeping but you hadn't noticed them yet. And it would have been invisible, to someone who didn’t hear Molly’s other voice, his own voice, every single day and treasured it more than anything else in the world. 

Caleb could always tell when Mollymauk was lying. And he was lying now. 

A wary prickle started up between his shoulder blades. 

Molly didn’t notice the slight change in him, smiling and picking up his script book, “Okay. Your line, love?”

Caleb nodded slowly and found his place on the page. No voice yet, not until he got a grip on the character, _“I just don’t know what to do. It feels like there’s no way forward.”_

Molly smiled and nodded encouragingly. He spoke in his own voice too, not even his acting voice. His own, honest voice, _“I know you’ve had a hard life, my love. People have hurt you and lied to you and that’s awful but believe me, you’re stronger than you can ever know.”_

A beat of sweat started running down Caleb’s back. 

He cleared his throat, looking down to his life, _“But what if they were right? What if I am useless and worthless and broken?”_

Molly reached out and took Caleb’s hand. It was in the stage directions. 

_“Look at everything you’ve achieved in spite of what they said. You’re brave and strong and kind and every day, even when it felt like too much, you kept fighting. How many people would do that?”_

Caleb swallowed, starting to see where this was going. He wondered where on earth Molly had found someone to bind this, who he’d hired to write it out so his own handwriting wouldn’t be recognisable. So much gold, so much effort...all for him…

The next lines were his. He took a deep breath and found it shook.

 _“Why are you telling me all this?”_ he asked, not able to meet Molly’s eyes.

Even without looking at him, he could feel the smile in his voice. Soft and shy and hopeful. The words were there, printed in black ink, stark on the creamy white page but he didn’t need to see them to know what was coming next. 

“Because I love you, Caleb Widogast,” Molly murmured, smiling hopefully. The complete and total truth, wholly sincere.

This time it wasn’t a forest silence. It was a total silence, a waiting silence. 

The caravan creaked slowly in the wind, rocking a little, though as Caleb sat there it felt like the tossing of a ship in the grips of the worst kind of storm. He felt himself torn into two halves, a rushing, pulsing in his head that was growing sickeningly loud. 

And Molly looked at him, eyes red and wide. Grief began to creep into the edges of them. 

Caleb threw himself to his feet, barked out, “I need...I...um…” and fled through the caravan door. 

Exit stage left. 

 

Not that anyone came particularly deep into this part of the forest, as wild as it was, as thick and green and natural was the darkness. But if they had, they might have seen the scorch marks on the thick, ancient trunks and wonder what kind of beast had been through, rampaging and reeling and managing to gouge out parts of such enormous trees. They probably would have gone back to their villages and talked of dragons, great green dragons with moss on their backs and hungry teeth.

They probably would have been very disappointed to know the actual cause of the marks was an average height, hormonal human wizard, sniffling tearfully as he launched fireball after fireball at anything not sentient in his path and hating himself.

Caleb had never been allowed to be a teenager. He’d never been allowed to feel things so intensely that they burned in his chest, to hate and love without any kind of restraint, to throw things haphazardly around a bedroom in pure frustration. Everything he felt had needed to be kept small and contained, caged inside himself like an angry little animal that would claw and scratch his insides.

So now, twenty six years old, he had no idea what to do with everything he was feeling. He’d had no kind of training, no practise. So, in typical fashion for someone who was at least a teenager in training and a fair way behind everyone else, he was throwing fire around and trying to destroy everything around him that couldn’t actually feel pain.

After a few moments, he’d come exhausted, panting and covered in a fine sweat that made his hair stick to his forehead. But then he’d remember Molly’s face, the way disappointment and anguish cracked the edges of his hopeful expression. Pain that Caleb had caused after he’d been given nothing but kindness and gentleness.

And the fire would flare to life in his hands again and he’d throw it out in front of him, sobbing, “Stupid, stupid, stupid…”

He should be overjoyed. He should be ecstatic. He should be back at the caravan, kissing Mollymauk over and over until his lips became soft and lovingly swollen, letting his hands wander.

He should be saying those words until he ran out of voice.

But instead he’d ran. Like the worst kind of coward, he’d ran, from himself more than Molly’s gentle offer of love. He’d panicked and bolted like a frightened deer, terrified of the emotions he found inside himself.

The rain started up again, thicker and fuller than before until it was like someone up above was simply pouring buckets of water down onto the forest floor, and Caleb’s fire burned out along with his anger. He slumped down onto a nearby stump and let the fat raindrops run down his face until he was completely soaked to the skin. He made no attempt to get under any cover.

He wanted to love Mollymauk. But to love took a kind of bravery that maybe he didn’t have yet. He’d loved before, he’d loved his mama and his papa, and look how that had ended.

To see a fire burning in front of you and plunge your already scarred and blackened hand back into it, what kind of foolishness was that?

The sound of the rain was deafening so Caleb didn’t realise Frumpkin was there until he felt wet fur rubbing against his ankles. He jumped a little, looking down and seeing his cat, looking utterly sodden and very pleased with himself.

“Chased off every frog within a five mile radius, huh?” Caleb grunted, reaching down and dandling those wet ears.

Frumpkin gave a purr that Caleb couldn’t hear over the rain but could feel under his fingertips. He had to smile a little when he felt it, that low rumbling that had kept him going so many times when things had seemed impossible and he’d been lost in his own mind.

And, like all those other times, something inside him became unstuck and he started to talk.

“It’s just…the whole idea of it scares me,” he sighed, voice low under the patter of the rain on the leaves up above, “I’d just accepted that I was never going to know anything even close to love, I’d written the whole idea off. And now…now everything’s changing. And I’ve never liked change, Frumpkin, you know that.”

Frumpkin blinked his amber eyes, like two dollops of honey, and flicked raindrops off his whiskers.

“But…” Caleb bit his lip, “I guess running away from an abusive home and joining a circus is a huge change too. And that worked out pretty well, as far as these things go. And it took a while to get there but it was all okay in the end.”

The smell of wet dirt filled his nose but it was that warm, rich sort of earthy smell that’s actually very nice. There had never been those kind of smells in Rexxantrum.

“Caduceus is right,” he said softly, ruffling Frumpkin’s fur, “I am someone different. I’m not Bren any more, I’m Caleb. And maybe it’s okay that what I want changes. That I want to be loved now and I want to love in return. And it might not be okay at the start…but it will.”

He sat in the rain a moment longer and looked down at his cat, “I should be having this conversation with Mollymauk, shouldn’t I?”

Frumpkin blinked slowly, making it clear that he thought that was obvious.

“Right,” Caleb smiled crookedly.

He stood, let Frumpkin settle around his shoulders and strode off back towards the camp.

 

The thought had occurred to Caleb but he’d let it pass so quickly, he’d barely even registered it. The king’s road was supposed to run straight and true from one end of the empire to the other, it had done even back when there had been a king. Nothing was meant to hamper it or block it, if it was, crownsguard would remove it quick as blinking.

Unless, of course, something was placed there deliberately. A fallen tree, not swept aside by the wind but cut at the base. Deliberately felled to block the path of a troupe who came this way every year at the exact same time.

 

Caleb knew something was wrong before he saw it. Even with the rain, it was too quiet.

He stopped, face paling, Frumpkin bristling around his shoulders. No voices, no music, no laughter, making the unpleasant task go faster. Silence like a held breath.

He broke into a run.

It had to be magic fire. The rain would have guttered out any normal flame and still the caravans burned even as nature desperately tried to stem the damage. Caleb ran past it, unable to stop, knowing something worse was ahead.

Molly was in the centre of the worst wreckage, splintered gilded wood and torn fabric, soaked and trampled into the mud so it lost its brightness, all scattered around him. He was soaked and struggling to breathe, looking like a butterfly with its wings torn away. Left there, thrown aside, discarded so he would be the very first thing Caleb saw.

The tiefling raised his head, looking like even that simple motion caused him intense pain, and saw Caleb there. Grief flooded his eyes and he mouthed a word lost to the rain.

“Run…”

Caleb did, though towards him. Of course he was allowed to get maddeningly close, a few steps away from their outstretched hands meeting, enough to hope. Enough that it hurt all the more when the spectral hand closed around him and yanked him back, slamming him down to the ground.

Mud and water rushed into his nose and mouth, bending him double with wracking coughs, incapacitating him with burning lungs. He could hear Molly crying his name, over the ringing and rush of the rain. But then that too was lost as something seized his wrists and yanked them behind his back until his joints screamed, jerking him into an upright position.

“Bren, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”

Caleb’s heart plummeted down to the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to open his eyes, some small childish part of him hoping beyond all sense that if he didn’t, none of it would be real and it would all turn out to be one of his awful nightmares.

But then the pulling on his arms increased by agonizing increments, tugging with a cold, ruthless indifference until it was nearly a certainty that his shoulders would tear from their sockets.

With a dry sob of pain, he opened his eyes, blinking through the streaming water.

Ikithon stood there, holding Mollymauk by a limp arm, his face carved from stone. He didn’t seem to have changed at all since Caleb had seen him last. The same cold eyes, the same hard line of a mouth, the same lantern jaw. And despite everything, Caleb felt the same fear grip him.

He hated how familiar it felt.

“Lucky that I found you before you could do anything too stupid,” Ikithon continued, voice calm and casual like he didn’t have a tiefling whimpering in pain and dangling from his hand, “Not to worry, those disgusting people who spirited you away have been taken in by the crownsguard. They will be duly punished.”

“No!” Caleb rasped, trying to fight against the force keeping him bound, “Please, don’t…”

“Because surely,” Ikithon snapped, his voice hard as ice breaking underfoot, “Surely you, my faithful ward, the boy I rescued from the streets, wouldn’t run away and shame me like this? Tell me the truth now, I’ll take you home and it will be as if none of this ever happened.”

Caleb winced. He knew exactly what Ikithon wanted. He wanted him to denounce Molly and all of his new family, he wanted to hear Caleb lie and blame everything on them, believe that it would truly keep him safe. All so he would have the guild of his admission, that extra crack in his heart, to weigh down on him even harder when they went home and he received his full punishment.

And once, not that long ago, he would have done it. But Ikithon didn’t know Caleb Widogast.

Something gave behind him and his hands were free. Lightning filled his cupped hands, lightning that seemed to come from the fury in his eyes.

But there it stayed.

Because without hesitation, Ikithon dragged Molly bodily in front of him, shamelessly using the younger man as a shield.

“Now Bren,” he counselled, voice low and dangerous, “Do not do anything foolish.”

Wrath and desperation filled Caleb’s voice, “The only foolish thing I ever did was believe your lies. I’m stronger than you, Ikithon, you know I am.”

Something flickered behind those cool blue eyes. Fear. He was right.

All the training, every time he had been beaten into the ground under the guise of teaching, it hadn’t been to make him stronger. It had been to keep him weak, keep him scared, keep him a tool. Because when it came down to it, he could turn Ikithon to ash.

And Mollymauk with him.

“Very well then,” the fear turned to the worst kind of ice cold desperation and he took Mollymauk’s hand, holding one of his fingers in a cruel grip.

The hands Molly held his swords with. The hands he played his lute with. The hands that had held Caleb so many gentle ways.

The hands he depended on for everything.

Ikithon’s hands jerked. There was an awful snap over the rumble of the rain. Mollymauk screamed.

“No!” Caleb wailed, the lightning dissipating to nothing, leaving only the smell of ozone.

Cool as anything, Ikithon moved to the next finger. He would snap each one, snap them beyond healing, and not even flinch, just to see Caleb break. And there was no way Caleb could stop him, not without hurting Mollymauk too.

Caleb felt as though he was immersed in ice cold water, vision foggy, lungs burning, heart gripped with shock. Unable to see which way was up. All he could do was cry out.

“Okay,” he sobbed, falling to his knees, the force taking hold of him again, “Okay, I’ll go with you. Just…just please, leave him alone.”

“Oh, we have gone far past you being able to make demands, insolent wretch,” Ikithon snapped, muscles tensing to yank again.

But Caleb managed to choke his words out faster, “I go with you. You take me, you leave them alone and don’t hurt them anymore. Or I’ll tell everyone what you did to my parents.”

That froze Ikithon where he stood. There was an awful lot an archmage could make disappear, a terrifying amount. But the cold blooded murder of two innocent citizens of the empire…that would be too much.

“Whatever you think you know…” the older wizard frowned, though without much conviction. Caleb had learned over the past year to spot bad actors and this performance wasn’t worth a bent penny.

“I know exactly what you did,” Caleb threw all the venom he’d been harbouring since he’d knelt in the charred skeleton of his first home into his voice, “I saw the ruins myself. I spoke to people who saw what you did. _I got my memories back, you fucker.”_

Ikithon narrowed his eyes. It was obvious how much he despised this, how much he hated Caleb gaining any kind of ground. A small part of Caleb’s mind whispered the truth that was starting to dawn on the both of them simultaneously.

 _He’ll kill you,_ the voice whispered, _you’ve made yourself too dangerous. He’s just going to take you back to Rexxantrum and kill you._

Fine then. Caleb set his jaw resolutely. As long as Molly was safe.

“Very well,” Ikithon let Molly fall. The mud soaked into his colourful coat which was torn all the way up the side.

Caleb stood, his legs shaky, shrugging off the binding spell. Ikithon sniffed, though that uncertainty in his eyes spoiled the effect of his previous domineering stare. That gave Caleb a small amount of satisfaction, at least.

“I’m saying goodbye,” Caleb limped his way over to where Molly lay, “You call off the crownsguard. Tell them the troupers are forgiven.”

Ikithon looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowing.

He swallowed, feeling his stomach turn over, “Please. Father.”

The one, petty win was apparently enough. With a dismissive grunt, he walked away, down to where Caleb could now hear the sounds of angry, muted conversation just beyond the trees.

Part of him hoped Molly would have passed out. Part of him didn’t want to have to do this. But something in his brave, beautiful, stubborn tiefling had held out. His breathing was shallow, his eyes fluttered open, as Caleb came over and knelt beside him.

“Caleb…” he rasped, voice pained and weak.

“Don’t try and move, Liebling, it’s okay…” Caleb somehow managed to keep his voice calm even as his insides roiled at the wounds he could see on Mollymauk. He desperately wished he knew some healing magic, “Caduceus is coming, he’ll fix you up.”

“Caleb, please…” Molly’s hand clung to his sodden, filthy shirt, “Please don’t go with him. I…I can’t lose you…”

“And I can’t lose you,” the tears pushed dangerously at him now, he only barely managed to keep them at bay, “It’s like you said, Molly, the best way to make me proud is just…live. Keep going, keep telling stories, keep singing songs. Make people smile.”

“Not without you,” Molly’s face was wet with something that had nothing to do with the rain or the blood.

“Please?” Caleb kissed his hand as he removed it from his arm, “For me? You saved my life, this is just me returning the favour.”

Molly still shook his head, still sobbed but he was too weak to do any more than that. Caleb moved away from him without too much trouble.

“And…I love you,” he whispered, eyes really stinging now with the effort of not dissolving into sobs, “I suppose I should say that too. I’m sorry my timing is so shitty.”

Molly’s wretched cry was what broke him and he turned away quickly before it became too painful. If he looked back, he would be done for.

“Tell the rest of them I’m sorry,” he continued, voice still calm, as if they were simply saying goodbye before the two of them went off to their starting places for another show, “I don’t think I have time to say goodbye to them all so…just tell them how grateful I am. To all of you.”

He could hear Molly shifting behind him, “Caleb…please, don’t, please don’t leave me…”

Caleb swallowed hard. He could feel the dull, pulsing energy of the transportation spell Ikithon must have used to get here, just beyond the tree line. He could feel him waiting for him, ready to make good on the promise his dead eyes had made if Caleb tried to back out on their arrangement. He would kill them all and he would save Mollymauk for the last and longest.

One foot in front of the other. Don’t look back.

“It has to be this way, Molly. Please…have a good life for me.”

Caleb had read all the plays, he knew how they had to end. If he were taller, broader in the shoulders, if he had a magic sword or something like that, he would fight Ikithon and he would win. If he was cleverer, if he told better jokes, he would be able to trick him and save the day.

But some stories just couldn’t end that way. Some stories were tragedies.

Caleb didn’t look back as he stepped into the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please consider leaving a comment or letting me know what you think on my Tumblr, @mollymauk-teafleak!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb is taken. Molly doesn't know what he will have to become to get him back. 
> 
> -
> 
> The song is from Hadestown

Mollymauk took a moment to ask himself how long it had been since he’d last held his swords in anger. With the intent to use them to hurt.

However long ago it had been, part of a dark and murky time he deliberately held far away from who he was now, he’d put them aside and promised himself he’d never do it again. A promise half-remembered, half-forgotten was a promise nonetheless.

It had begun to leech back in over the years, as much as he hadn’t wanted it, as much as he’d tried to use drink, sex, various banned substances to keep it all at bay. Drops of ink spoiling the pool, reaching up with insidious little fingers to try and claim him back. But that wasn’t who he was now.

The grip still fit his hand perfectly. Molly flicked his wrist, catching his own reflection in the blade, the carnival glass turning his features blurry and indistinct, coloured incorrectly in the iridescent surface.

Not so indistinct that he couldn’t see the black eye. The split lip. The cracked tooth when he held his jaw open.

All of it made him angry, a sick, thick kind of anger in the very pit of his stomach. He liked his face a lot. It was half his job and more than half of his identity.

But that anger was a weak and feeble thing, a wind barely strong enough to lift a leaf when compared to what Mollymauk felt when he remembered the look on Caleb’s face. So scared, so vulnerable, a child who’d been hurt so many times that he’d stopped asking for a reason. Kissing Mollymauk softly and walking to his death without a shred of hesitation, like he’d expected it.

Like he wasn’t worth fighting for.

With a soft hiss, Molly holstered the sword at his right side, the twin on his left. He swept out of his charred caravan and marched out into the too hot dawn left behind by the rain.

For the first time in a long time, he drank down that darkness in a deep breath. The taste of blood prickled on his tongue and a deeper need for more woke in his chest. And he knew exactly whose blood he wanted.

The anger, a cavernous, yawning anger must have been plain on his face as worry swept over Yasha’s face when she saw him, though only briefly. Her fingers tightened on her own sword’s handle.

“What’s the plan?” she asked, voice quiet.

Mollymauk had always loved that about Yasha. No hesitation, no questions. But she always stuck to the plan.

He set his jaw, feeling a pang of pain from his broken tooth.

“We bring him home,” he replied.

 

When you knew you had such little time left, Caleb assumed, the small things would matter less.

He was wrong on that count.

On the long, long ride back to Rexxantrum, all he could thing about was how much the chains chafed on his wrists and how stuffy it was in the back of an enchanted carriage with the curtains drawn.

Every time the wheels hit a bump in the road, a rock or a pothole or something he couldn’t see, he’d hear the chains rattle and bite into his skinny wrists even more. They were heavy, he knew that much, he could have done without the regular reminders. He also knew they were inscribed with magic cancelling runes, serious heavy duty ones that Caleb hadn’t even seen outside of history books about far darker times.

That’s who he was then. A fiercely dangerous rogue wizard, using his powers for evil.

There was some irony in that.

 

“Mollymauk, listen, you can’t just go running into something like this.”

The baron of Whitestone had clearly been pulled out of bed by Nott’s message spell or, if not that, certainly the large flash of purple energy from Gilmore’s transportation spell erupting right in the middle of their parlour.

Shaun had been faster to rouse at the message.

Molly hoped it was because the newlyweds were awake and enjoying each other. He hoped their love still tasted sweet. He hoped it always would.

He hoped he wasn’t dragging them into something they wouldn’t come back from.

Percy caught hold of his wrist, turning him back towards him when he tried to walk away, “Mollymauk…”

“Perce,” Molly shook his head, “You’re kind to offer but I can’t wait for things to be made official. You getting involved now is a hair’s breadth away from an all-out declaration of war. It would be messy and lengthy and we just can’t afford it right now. I have to get to Rexxantrum, get in, get out fast.”

The frazzled looking human pulled his robe tighter around himself, “This man seized a whole troupe of innocent people performing under my name and took off with one of them. I can have him arrested and tried inside a day.”

“I may not even have that long,” Molly says softly, lowering his voice so his tiny militia massing in the parlour couldn’t hear him. A militia that seemed nowhere near powerful enough to take on an archmage of the capital city… “In a day, Caleb could be dead.”

“How do you know he…”

He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, the both of them wishing feverishly he’d never started it. But those blue eyes didn’t yield, Percival ever the pragmatist.

“I don’t,” Molly admitted, eyes flickering downwards, “But if I start thinking like that then…then I don’t know how I’m going to come back. So I can’t.”

After a lengthy sigh, Percy let go of his arm, resigning himself though he clearly wasn’t happy about it, “Get Caleb out. Then come back here, in one piece, and we do things properly. We make sure the bastard never sees the light of day again.”

“Yes sir,” a thin, brittle smile flickered over Mollymauk’s face, then replaced by one more gentle and real, “Make sure Vex doesn’t follow us. She’s good in a fight but I’m not taking a pregnant baroness into a midnight raid.”

Percy managed a short, tired laugh, “I’ll keep her here. I’ll explain its no slight on her fighting abilities.”

Molly gently touched his arm before moving quickly into the parlour. He turned to an anxious, tense looking Shaun Gilmore, sat with his arm around Vax’ildan, and inclined his head respectfully.

“Rexxantrum please.”

 

Caleb wondered idly if it would be a public execution. Was that the point of the chains? Flavour for the narrative of the dangerous, murderous wizard high on bloodlust and his own magic? A reminder to all of Rexxantrum. This is why magic is kept behind walls of privilege, status and money. Look who keeps you safe.

But the curtains stayed closed as they rolled through the city gates, Caleb only aware of it because he could hear the guard calling them through, hollering at others waiting to enter.

 He frowned, even that small action causing pain to crackle through him, with his blackened eyes and swollen lips. How could they be in Rexxantrum already?

Though he supposed he was still thinking in circus time. They took a far more circuitous route, winding their way through all the tiny villages, zig zagging this way and that to visit other towns, circling the mountains, wandering around the lakes.

That and he’d long lost his grip on time, constantly in the darkness, the rocking motion of the carriage never ceasing even a little.

The smell of the smoke was unmistakable though. Smoke and bodies and the reek of water pooling in the street. It was Rexxantrum without a doubt.

Caleb closed his eyes and imagined Molly somewhere warm, with the sun on his shoulders, surrounded by the smell of clean grass.

 

The city was in darkness though lights still shone in windows like sequins embedded in black cloth.

Part of Molly admired how pretty it was from where he stood up on one of the hills that surrounded the city. He wondered what was behind all those windows. Maybe a pair of lovers who’d both been at work all day, the twinge of desperately missing each other carried in their chests for the long hours apart, finally able to dissipate as they fell into each other’s arms. Each kiss feeling so precious because of the distance that had made them wait, even though they’d both known it was only temporary.

Molly closed his eyes and took a deep breath, tears threatening him, closing his throat.

He let the dark, inky part of him take over a little more. There were no tears in that, just the cold determination and the exact knowledge of what to do.

“We go in through the sewers,” he said, swords clanking when he moved down from the boughs of the tree he perched in like a peacock who’d lost his way, “Quiet, quick, no crownsguard. The house is at the centre of the city.”

His little team, Vax, Yasha, Fjord, Jester, Nott, Beau all nodded and made noises of agreement. Not everyone, a smaller group could move faster and more subtly through dark streets. Shaun would stay up on the hills, the piece of wire ready in his pocket to receive the message, telling him to transport them out or reinforcements in.

It would be a swift journey to their target. Molly knew it’s position well. It was where he met the love of his life, how could it not stand out like a glowing golden pin stuck in the world? It was the first time Caleb’s eyes had met his own, the first time he’d smiled at him and received the first glimpse of the man who would become the most important person in the world to him.

And it was where he was going to get him back.

 

Caleb didn’t want to cry out but he couldn’t help it. The blow landed so hard and so fierce, it wrung a scream from him before he’d even had the chance to make the choice. The taste of fresh blood burst across his tongue again as his jaw connected with the floor.

“Pick yourself up,” Ikithon snarled, apparently in the cold, echoing room Caleb had just been thrown into.

He did, the only other choice being to lay there on the stone floor. Or rather, he tried, staggering when his aching knees didn’t want to move, pitching forward when his bound hands jerked instinctively to catch himself but failed. He could taste his own breath inside the cloth hood, hot and sour.

But then a hand seized his shoulder and the hood was ripped away, revealing the cavernous basement where they’d held so many training fights. There was only gentle firelight flickering in the sconces on the walls but still it was too much for Caleb’s eyes after who knew how long in the darkness. He winced and ducked his head, tears beading behind his eyelids.

“Don’t you dare cry in front of me,” Ikithon snapped, “Pathetic wretch, I raised you better than that.”

“You didn’t raise me at all,” Caleb forced the words through his bitten tongue and swollen lips, “You can’t say you raised a flower after you trampled all over it and kept it in the dark.”

“Poetic,” Ikithon’s cheeks flushed red, clearly not used to being spoken back to, “Did you learn that among those degenerates and devil bloods who called themselves players?”

Caleb stared up at him, hair strewn across his face, sticking to the dried blood and sweat, “I learnt plenty from them. What love is. What life is. How to ignore every damn thing you ever told me. And whatever you do to me now, Ikithon, you can’t undo that.”

And he smiled.

Ikithon pulled his lips back from his teeth and the wall lamps dimmed to nearly nothing, “I was going to give you a quick death, Bren, for the sake of the years you lived under my roof. But you’ve undone that. You will be begging me to let you die by the time I’m done with you.”

The smile didn’t fade, bloody and bright, “My name is Caleb.”

 

Whatever Ikithon was planning, it apparently didn’t start yet. He just took his chains and threaded them through a ring on the wall, pulling them taught to yank Caleb’s arms up above his head. And then he left him there.

Only when the shadows closed around him did Caleb feel safe enough to cry.

It was hard, to be held in the very centre of the place he’d been hurt so many times, where mocking spells and cruel words had knocked him to his feet, so often that he had no idea how it hadn’t shattered him completely. It made it hard to stay brave.

He cried for that skinny young boy, all skin and bones, even the memory of a kind family taken from him. He cried for himself as he was now, punished for even trying to seek love in his life again.

He cried for how unfair it all was.

Time slipped away from him again before too long. He didn’t sleep, at least he thought he didn’t, he just sat there and thought about how much he wanted to sleep in a vague, misty way that never did slip completely into fully dreaming. Not with the pain gnawing at him all the time, in a dull toothless way, not just his wound but hunger and thirst too which soon crept up and found him.

Eventually, thinking that he’d lose his mind if he couldn’t grasp the seconds, minutes, hours again, he passed the time by singing. Though tears began rolling down his face and stinging the opened skin there, he sang all the songs he could remember Molly singing. Caleb’s own voice couldn’t compare to his tiefling’s, not by a long shot, he still sang the words, the melodies making him feel closer to everything he’d lost.

He hoped Ikithon could hear him.

There were so many songs, Caleb realised, as he ran through them all. Bawdy tavern songs Molly had only sang after he’d ingested a fair amount of alcohol. Long ballads that brought ancient stories back to life, so many verses that Caleb had no idea how Molly remembered them all and was stunned to find he could remember himself. Sweet, simple folk songs that could be played on nothing more than an old tin tub, designed to stick in children’s heads.

And then there were the songs Molly had only sung for him. Songs where he’d lain back against the pillows, only his lute keeping any kind of modesty, looking half a god in the low light. And Caleb had felt like the whole world was in those songs.

Those songs brought the tears on thicker. His voice cracked and splintered like old wood, now he faded in and out between verses. But he couldn’t stop.

Caleb saved one song for last. The one he knew best and held dearest.

The one Molly had sang to close the very first show he’d ever seen. The song that had made Caleb brave enough to seek something more than misery in his life.

 _“I was alone so long, I didn’t even know that I was lonely…”_ he sang, his voice rough and fading, “ _Out in the cold so long, I didn’t even know that I was cold…”_

His fingers twitched listlessly at the empty air, trying to remember how Molly’s fingers moved over the silver strings. The words echoed through the empty space that seemed darker every moment. Or was that his own eyes…he didn’t know any more.

_“Say that you’ll hold me forever. Say that the wind won’t change on us. Say that we’ll stay with each other and it will always be like this…”_

Caleb’s voice finally crackled and disappeared completely. Deprived of water, deprived of fresh air there was nothing else he could do.

But in his mind, the song continued. And of course it was Molly’s voice that took over.

_“I’m gonna hold you forever. The wind will never change on us.”_

Caleb frowned. Molly’s voice echoed in his mind, not the way it had in the tent. And it was thick with tears too. Almost like he could see what a sad, broken thing his love had become.

It was soft too, not booming the way it had at the end of the show. It wasn’t for a whole audience, just for the ears of one.

It was almost as if it wasn’t a memory.

_“Long as we stay with each other, then it will always be like this.”_

Fingers brushed his hair back from his face. A familiar scent reached his nose, one that had no place in somewhere dark and terrible as this.

“You can’t be here,” Caleb rasped, sheer shock making his voice come back, “I told you to let me go.”

“And I didn’t listen,” Molly replied, smiling through his tears, “Are you surprised?”

“I…I didn’t dare hope,” Caleb managed a weak smile in return.

Molly shook his head, pressing a kiss to Caleb’s forehead, unable to say how he’d managed to keep himself from doing it for so long. He’d kiss other places too but they looked too sore and tender, wounds that made the inky anger rise but his relief and love at seeing Caleb alive pushed it back.

“We’re taking you home, Caleb. We’ve come to save you.”

Caleb’s smile faded, “No…Molly, Liebling, you can’t. He’ll never stop hunting me, he’ll never give up. And next time nothing I can do will keep him from killing you all.”

“You can beat him, Caleb, you said it yourself,” Molly looked dismayed, “We’ll get you healed and safe again and next time, you’ll beat him.”

“No…Molly, no…” Caleb shook his head, grasping for a way to make him see, difficult when most of him was crying out to follow him and believe what he was saying.

His heart sank as he realised how many of his family were here. Yasha, looming and powerful, stood at the door. Nott, his dear Nott, crouched over her little piece of wire. Fjord with a thieves lamp, sword glinting in the low light. Vax, half a shadow himself, daggers ready to fly. Jester hefting the axe that made Caleb’s arms ache to even look at, grinning at him, clearly itching to rush forward and hug him. Even Beau, staff rapping restlessly on the ground, eager to hit something though she gave him a crooked smile and a wink.

They’d all come for him.

“Caleb, I know you’re scared, it’s okay,” Molly cupped his face, gently so he didn’t hurt him, “But I will not leave you here with that man. You’ve trusted me before, do it just one more time for me? We will get you home.”

Caleb looked into those red eyes, the lighthouses of his life for the past year. Stranger things had happened surely…if he was willing to fight…

“You troupers really are as stupid as I hoped you’d be.”

Ikithon’s voice was the sound of tipping too far over and edge and falling, gasping for a handhold that wasn’t there.

A glow surrounded the cavern, bars of magic over every surface. Yasha jerked back with a hiss of pain, her hand burning on those that formed under her palm.

Caleb sat up, eyes wide, “No…”

Molly’s swords were free with a sound like an inhalation. His face turned cold, like nothing Caleb recognised. There was no performance in his voice when he spoke, it was truth.

“Come out and die, Trent Ikithon. It’s past time you paid for your sins.”

A shift in the magic of the room and Ikithon stood behind Caleb, wordless and flushed with fury. He reached down, clearly aiming to slit his throat but a sword came flashing out and he was forced to back off. Then the first spell shot out and, after a breath, hell opened up.

The flashes of light, the shriek of metal, the snarl of people determined to kill each other. And Caleb, frightened, panicked, sleep deprived, was in the middle of it all.

So many against just one should have been simple matter of mathematics. But not if the one was an archmage.

It was so frantic, Caleb could only get snapshots of it, fragments coming at him too fast to grasp for more than an instant. Beau staggering back, catching herself on her staff, red soaking into her blue shirt. The firelight catching on the line of Fjord’s hooked sword as he swung it high above his head, shadow creatures surrounding him in an unbroken circle. Vax’s cloak sweeping behind him, looking like wings.

Caleb closed his eyes, wanting to curl up and press his hands to his ears, wanting to stop it all. His friends were dying all around him. And there was nothing he could do, his panic forming tighter chains than Ikithon ever could have hoped to put on him. He couldn’t breathe.

A sound reached him over the clangour. Molly, crying out in pain.

Caleb’s eyes flew open to see Ikithon himself, arm outstretched, eyes like chips of dirty ice. The shadow beasts kept everyone else at bay, no matter how hard they tried. And his fingers closed around Molly’s throat.

One of his swords lay shattered on the ground, the glass broken into long, dangerous shards and each one held the picture in front of Caleb over and over again, a thousand times he had to watch his love dying, a thousand times he couldn’t save him.  

The darkness was thickening, oozing like spilled ink.

Not again. _Not again._

Caleb stood, like the chains had never even been there. The shadows were gone, a bright and brilliant light filling the cavern instead. It took Caleb a few moments before he realised the light was coming from him.

It wasn’t like before. Like the time he and Ikithon fought, like the time in the woods with Mollymauk where he lost control. Both of those times he had forgotten the word as soon as he’d said it, like it hadn’t really come from him at all.

But now he knew it. It burned there on his lips. The name of fire.

It crackled up his skin, wreathed his hair, but he didn’t burn. How could he? The fire wasn’t on him, it _was_ him.

Molly fell to the floor, Ikithon’s grasp slackened in a mix of horror, terror and awe. Everyone else was stunned, it was their turn to be unable to move, weapons still held ready even after the shadows were gone. Because who the hell knew what was going to happen next.

Caleb took step after step, like he was relearning how to walk. The pain hadn’t faded, in fact it was fuelling him like electricity, the way a fire consumes wood and paper.

Eventually, it was only him and Ikithon. Caleb realised that he towered over the man now as he shrank back in fear. He’d always been taller than him of course, it had just been a matter of perspective.

Was this what Ikithon had seen every time he knocked Caleb back with harsh words, every time he’d threatened him and forced him down to nearly nothing? Had this made him feel powerful?

Caleb just felt sad.

He tried to think of something to say. A hero would always have a witty quip, one line to cut as sharp as the final blow. But, as he’d already realised, to his dismay and his relief, Caleb wasn’t a hero.

“I have nothing to say to you. You aren’t worth the effort.”

His voice was like the crackling of a fire. He stretched out one hand. And everything in him flowed into Ikithon and burnt him to ash in less time than it would take to strum a lute.

 

The flash of light was enough to hurt. Orange then red then a harsh white. Mollymauk cringed and covered his eyes with his hand as his heart hammered in his chest, one word over and over. Caleb, Caleb, Caleb…

The whole air smelled of burning, smoke hung in it like wisps of fine gossamer. Black streaked up the grey stone walls, an ashy residue all emanating from one point. Caleb lay in the centre of that point, curled up small like a puppet with his strings cut.

“No!” Molly sobbed, staggering to his feet, clearing the distance between them with something more like an extended fall than steps.

His throat still burned, bruises in the shape of fingers rising there already. It was hard to suck in air but Molly didn’t care about that right now.

Caleb felt so cold when his hands finally found him, turned him over and held him in his arms. It was like all like heat had gone out of him, lost to make that final rush of flame and light. His skin was covered in the sooty substance, his hair steamed gently like the ends of his copper locks had singed but his skin was icy.

And his eyes were blank.

“Caleb!” Molly gasped, voice painful, “Caleb, come on, come back to me…”

Nott’s voice was somewhere in the background through the smoke, calling Caduceus. Jester was already moving forward, her hands glowing with energy through the grey air.

“Caleb, please…” Molly murmured, moving back only as much as he had to so he could let Jester through. Any further from Caleb and he would have broken. “Please, it can’t end like this…”

There was no ink left in him, it had fled when his sword shattered.

All there was left was the song.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thank you to everyone whose supported this fic, a huge big hug to all of you or a high five, whichever you prefer

Everything was always moving. He wished it wouldn’t.

It was like he’d been running, the same pounding of his heart so intense he was certain it could be seen through his skin, the same metallic taste at the back of his throat, the same acidic burn in his muscles. But it never stopped.

Whenever he tried to focus on a body part, he lost it completely. Whenever he opened his eyes, there was nothing there. Whenever he tried to sense anything beyond his own skin, it just felt fuzzy and indistinct.

Basically, he was nowhere. But a rushing, restless, crackling nowhere that was draining him more and more every second. Wringing him out until there was nothing left. Spreading him thin until he became see through.

He was so, so tired.

But not quite tired enough to let go. Not enough to sink into I and lose himself entirely. He got the sense that something in him was clinging to this imitation of reality with white knuckled fingertips.

It would be so easy to let go. To just…fade away. Let the rushing carry him away in its tearing, crashing current.

But still something clung on tight and he despaired.

He’d had a name, once. He thought he did. He’d had something…something to reach for. That must be what the part of him clung on for. For the sake of something he couldn’t remember any more. What was the point in that?

He couldn’t tell how long it had been like this. Forever maybe. Or never. Such words were hard to find meaning for, when you were lost.

However long it had been, he was done. Far beyond done. He was so desperate to let go, inches away from just doing it.

You could say the voice came right on time.

Through the crashing and crackling, the noise that sometimes sounded like a full forest on fire whenever he could find the awareness to know what those concepts meant, he heard the voice. It wasn’t a voice he knew, not that he could even grasp what he did and didn’t know right now. It sounded young. Familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

_“Please come back. I need you. He needs you. Please?”_

It reached him even through all of it, even when he didn’t have ears to hear it. He tugged on him like a fishhook through his navel, jerking him up. And suddenly he realised, his choice wasn’t just between letting go and holding on. He could pull himself up and out.

So he did.

And Caleb Widogast opened his eyes.

 

Molly had been sleeping by his side at the time, sat in a chair, bend awkwardly over the bed where his comatose wizard was laid out. An uncomfortable position but he was loathe to leave his lover’s side, as exhausting as it all had been.

But when he felt Caleb’s fingers move in his own loose grasp, he bolted straight upright.

He didn’t dare hope at first, not after so many painful wishes turned daydreams where he had his Caleb back but jolted back into reality only to see he was still gone. But then Mollymauk realised he wasn’t holding Caleb’s hand any more. Caleb was holding his.

Then he was sitting up, shifting gingerly among the pillows, blue eyes open and alive, no longer staring blankly. He was yawning, wincing at his own breath. He had an odd little smile on his lips.

“Caleb…” Mollymauk gasped, voice faint and shaking like he was the one who was a dream now.

He turned at the sound of his name, smile growing wider.

“Mr Tealeaf,” his voice was rough with disuse but it was his, beyond a doubt, “Sorry, Molly. You asked me to call you Molly.”

Tears finally spilled over the tiefling’s cheeks as he surged forward and kissed him full on the mouth, for as long as the two of them could go without air.

“Caleb Widogast,” he finally giggled, once the kiss was over, resting his forehead on Caleb’s, “I missed you.”

 

Mollymauk closed the bathroom door behind him. He took a long moment, leaning against it and taking one deep breath.

Finally he nodded slightly to himself, “Alright.”

Jaw set determinedly, he made his way down through the corridors of Whitestone Castle. It was a very easy place to get lost in, set as it was in fashionable disarray. Molly often suspected you needed to be of a certain social standing to navigate your way through it successfully. Even after spending a few weeks here every year when the circus’ route took them to the home of their patrons, he still got lost more times than he was willing to admit.

Though he knew the way to Caleb’s room well enough, given all the times he’d traced it in the last week. Since they’d all piled through the transportation magic, Molly bloodied and frantic and clutching his wizard who no one was really sure if he was dead, alive or somewhere in between, his world had shrank to the airy, spacious room the de Rolo’s had given over for Caleb to heal in.

At first, nothing on earth could have made him move from Caleb’s bedside; he’d snapped and hissed at anyone who had tried to coax him away, he’d not even let Caduceus heal his wounds for a good few hours, insisting Caleb needed him more.

But no magic, Caduceus’, Jester’s or Pike’s had done anything for poor Caleb. He’d stayed comatose and unmoving for a terrifying number of days, staring into space with his eyes clouded over. ‘Lost in his own magic’ was how Caduceus had put it, anxiously tugging on his ears. He’d fallen into the well of power inside himself, burned up so much of a resource he wasn’t used to using and in such a short space of time that it had forced him into a shut down.

All that could be done was make sure he didn’t starve to death and wait for Caleb to pull himself out of it or fade away completely. Molly had wanted to scream- and he had done, at first- with the unfairness of it all. Everything they’d done to bring him home, the blood and magic that had been spilled, and now there was nothing to do but wait. It was maddening.

The anger and fight had burned away after a while, leaving him empty, clinging to Caleb’s cold hand and refusing to eat, drink or sleep. He’d let himself be healed but only in the sense that he didn’t pull away when his cleric friends approached him with bandages and soothing magic.

It was Caduceus who had noticed. Who’d come to him one evening when he was sitting quietly, holding Caleb’s hand, when he was certain no one else would be around.

The next morning, Molly became himself again. He bathed, he finally changed out of his ruined battle clothes, he asked for fresh bandages. He ate the meals Vex had been sending to the room from the kitchens and politely asked for more. He’d brought out his lute, mercifully untouched by the fire Ikithon set in the camp, and filled that corner of the castle with music.

He still slept on a cot in the room by Caleb’s bedside and spent as much time as he could singing and talking to him but it wasn’t the despair of before. Of course, half his thoughts and words were still prayers, pleas, begging any god who was listening to bring Caleb back.

And someone must have had their ear turned to Whitestone. Because his Caleb came home to him.

Molly could still scarcely believe it. In the few nights since, he’d wake up and need to reach for his love sleeping beside him, take in him his arms and listen to him breathe and know he was safe.

No one was ever going to hurt him ever again. Molly promised himself that, it was inked as deeply into him as his tattoos.

No one would ever hurt his Caleb ever again.

 

Molly pushed back the door of the white, expansive room he and Caleb had been gifted. He smiled to see the wizard up and about, curled up like his cat in a wicker chair by the open doors to the balcony, a book in his hands. His lips moved ever so slightly as he read, the way he always did when he was reading something not in Zemnian, and Molly felt his heart flutter at how innocent and adorable it was.

“Looking well, my love,” he said softly, not wanting to make him jump.

Caleb’s eyes flickered up to him and he smiled. He smiled so much more now, wider and more frequent. He’d come back with a light inside him, though Molly expected it had always been there. It had just had a wall around it up until now.

“Feeling well,” Caleb shifted so his legs were neatly folded underneath him, dropping his book to the floor. Molly always felt the need to fan himself whenever Caleb abandoned a book for his company, coming from his wizard it was a gesture of fawning romance worthy of a song.

Molly sat in the twin to his chair, across from him. It was a beautiful day in Whitestone. Winter was clearly on the way but no one had seen fit to tell the sun yet, shining brightly across the valley, illuminating the orange gold leaves in the trees and the river, swelled by rain.

“Is everything okay?” Caleb tilted his head, seeing his love’s far away expression.

Molly opened his mouth for a moment but closed it again, seeming to change his words at the last second, “I guess I’m not used to staying in one place for such a long time, y’know? I love spending time with Percy and Vax but…I just get an itch after a while. I’m not built for stationary living.”

Caleb chuckled fondly, “I think I’m starting to get that too. But everyone’s back to full strength now, we’ll be back on the road in no time, right? And everything will go back to the way it was.”

Something in Molly tensed and he took hold of his tail, passing it restlessly through his hands.

“Right. Yeah. As to that…”

Caleb tilted his head, freezing in place, “Mollymauk?”

A coy smile flickered over his face and he chuckled nervously, “Would it be okay if things weren’t exactly the same? If maybe our lives were…pretty fucking different actually?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Molly shrugged, “It’s just, I’m like ninety…maybe ninety nine per cent sure I’m pregnant?”

Part of Caleb remembered a voice that was familiar and unfamiliar all at once, a voice that said it needed him. And then he forgot.

Mollymauk cleared his throat into the long silence that followed, practically vibrating with anxious energy, “Caleb? Love, are you still with me?”

Caleb started a little, he hadn’t noticed the silence mounting. A smile flickered to life on his face, his eyes growing shiny with unshed tears.

A road had opened up before him, leading off into the future. A future that he could imagine without any fear or hesitation. A future with love, bravery, security. A future with music and stories and magic.

Quietly, inside himself, he said goodbye to the poor, restless ghost of Bren Aldric Ermendrud.

“I’m with you,” murmured Caleb Widogast.

 

THREE YEARS LATER

Under the rows and rows of raised seating, in the shadows, it was surprisingly cold but Caleb had long ago modified himself a spell to spread just enough warmth through his skin to keep him perfectly toasty without being uncomfortable.

He looked out through the slats and smiled, content in the knowledge that absolutely everyone was in their right place and ready for the off. Even the audience, who was just starting to filter through the open doors of the tent. They were as important to the show as any of them.

Even as confident as he was, even after so many shows, Caleb still counted down those last few minutes in his head.

Or at least he tried to.

“Papa!”

Caleb turned, smiling with a mix of exasperation and fondness, “Well, well, well. Someone found their way out of the wagon.”

Trinket, his little son, came bounding up with a smile bright and innocent as a summer morning, “I wasn’t sleepy any more, papa!”

Caleb chuckled, picking him up and balancing him on his hip. Soon he’d be too big to hold like this; it was best to take every single opportunity he had.

“You might not be sleepy, Trinket, but it’s definitely very late. Far past little people’s bedtimes.”

His little purple face pooched in disappointment, “But I wanted to be in the show. Elaina and Joanna get to stay up…”

“Your cousins are a squeak older than you, little Schatz,” Caleb remined him but he could already feel himself relenting. He never had much of a backbone when it came to his ball of sunshine.

“I went to see daddy,” Trinket rested his head on Caleb’s shoulder, “Just to make sure he wasn’t nervous for the show.”

Caleb felt a rush of fondness and kissed the top of his head, stroking back the curls he’d inherited from Molly in a colour inherited from himself, “Was daddy nervous?”

“No, cos I have him a big hug and kiss,” Trinket sounded very pleased with himself, “And he let me play with his make up.”

“Ah…” he hadn’t noticed in the low light. And yes, now the shoulder of his shirt was covered in glitter.

Such were the joys of being a father.

And there were so many joys, glitter being the least of them. Since the first time he’d held Trinket in his arms, he’d found depths of love inside himself he’d never knew existed. And a tolerance for mess.

“Show’s going to start soon, my little Schatz, are you going to stay here and help me with my magic?” Caleb knew when to drop the mask of trying to be a stern parent. At least he’d made the effort.

Trinket beamed, showing off his fangs that would never be as big and sharp as his daddy’s but could smile just as brightly.

 

Caleb had always loved the show but he loved it even more when he could see it through his son’s eyes.

He was so wrapped up in it, in the way he gasped and kicked excitedly and pulled on his coat to point out all his aunties and uncles, that Caleb almost missed his cue.

There was still that prickle of anxiety every time he stepped out under the eyes of the audience. But he knew he could look out there and see Molly, right in the centre of the stage under the spotlight, arm outstretched towards him.

“…and finally, a round of applause please for our talented arcanist and my husband, Mr Caleb Widogast!” Molly’s eyes widened a little in surprise when he saw Trinket clinging like a koala to his husband’s back but he didn’t even pause, “And his spectacular assistant, Trinket!”

Caleb laughed with everyone else as he stepped up to take Molly’s hand, right in his place amongst the rest of the troupe. One of the family, right where he belonged. They all bowed deeply, perfectly in time.

“We have been The Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities,” Molly called out, threading his fingers through Caleb’s and kissing Trinket’s pudgy cheek, “A very good night to you all!”

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment and letting me know what you think! Visit my Tumblr, @mollymauk-tealeaf for more Critical Role AUs and headcanons!


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